Lord Macaulay .........................................................................................................................................1

JOHN DRYDEN. .....................................................................................................................................1

HISTORY..............................................................................................................................................22

MILL ON GOVERNMENT. .................................................................................................................42

WESTMINSTER REVIEWER'S DEFENCE OF MILL. ......................................................................60

UTILITARIAN THEORY OF GOVERNMENT. .................................................................................76

SADLER'S LAW OF POPULATION. ..................................................................................................92

SADLER'S REFUTATION REFUTED. .............................................................................................107

MIRABEAU........................................................................................................................................122

BARERE. .............................................................................................................................................136

"The Poetical Works of John Dryden". In 2 volumes. University Edition. London, 1826.

The public voice has assigned to Dryden the first place in the second rank of our poets,no mean station in a

table of intellectual precedency so rich in illustrious names. It is allowed that, even of the few who were his

superiors in genius, none has exercised a more extensive or permanent influence on the national habits of

thought and expression. His life was commensurate with the period during which a great revolution in the

public taste was effected; and in that revolution he played the part of Cromwell. By unscrupulously taking the

lead in its wildest excesses, he obtained the absolute guidance of it. By trampling on laws, he acquired the

authority of a legislator. By signalising himself as the most daring and irreverent of rebels, he raised himself

to the dignity of a recognised prince. He commenced his career by the most frantic outrages. He terminated it

in the repose of established sovereignty,the author of a new code, the root of a new dynasty.

Of Dryden, however, as of almost every man who has been distinguished either in the literary or in the

political world, it may be said that the course which he pursued, and the effect which he produced, depended

less on his personal qualities than on the circumstances in which he was placed. Those who have read history

with discrimination know the fallacy of those panegyrics and invectives which represent individuals as

effecting great moral and intellectual revolutions, subverting established systems, and imprinting a new

character on their age. The difference between one man and another is by no means so great as the

superstitious crowd supposes. But the same feelings which in ancient Rome produced the apotheosis of a

popular emperor, and in modern Rome the canonisation of a devout prelate, lead men to cherish an illusion

which furnishes them with something to adore. By a law of association, from the operation of which even

minds the most strictly regulated by reason are not wholly exempt, misery disposes us to hatred, and

happiness to love, although there may be no person to whom our misery or our happiness can be ascribed.

The peevishness of an invalid vents itself even on those who alleviate his pain. The good humour of a man

elated by success often displays itself towards enemies. In the same manner, the feelings of pleasure and

admiration, to which the contemplation of great events gives birth, make an object where they do not find it.

Thus, nations descend to the absurdities of Egyptian idolatry, and worship stocks and reptilesSacheverells

and Wilkeses. They even fall prostrate before a deity to which they have themselves given the form which

commands their veneration, and which, unless fashioned by them, would have remained a shapeless block.

They persuade themselves that they are the creatures of what they have themselves created. For, in fact, it is

the age that forms the man, not the man that forms the age. Great minds do indeed react on the society

which has made them what they are; but they only pay with interest what they have received. We extol

Bacon, and sneer at Aquinas. But, if their situations had been changed, Bacon might have been the Angelical

Doctor, the most subtle Aristotelian of the schools; the Dominican might have led forth the sciences from

their house of bondage. If Luther had been born in the tenth century, he would have effected no reformation.

If he had never been born at all, it is evident that the sixteenth century could not have elapsed without a great

schism in the church. Voltaire, in the days of Louis the Fourteenth, would probably have been, like most of

the literary men of that time, a zealous Jansenist, eminent among the defenders of efficacious grace, a bitter

assailant of the lax morality of the Jesuits and the unreasonable decisions of the Sorbonne. If Pascal had

entered on his literary career when intelligence was more general, and abuses at the same time more flagrant,

when the church was polluted by the Iscariot Dubois, the court disgraced by the orgies of Canillac, and the

nation sacrificed to the juggles of Law, if he had lived to see a dynasty of harlots, an empty treasury and a

crowded harem, an army formidable only to those whom it should have protected, a priesthood just religious

enough to be intolerant, he might possibly, like every man of genius in France, have imbibed extravagant

prejudices against monarchy and Christianity. The wit which blasted the sophisms of Escobarthe

impassioned eloquence which defended the sisters of Port Royalthe intellectual hardihood which was not

beaten down even by Papal authoritymight have raised him to the Patriarchate of the Philosophical

Church. It was long disputed whether the honour of inventing the method of Fluxions belonged to Newton or

to Leibnitz. It is now generally allowed that these great men made the same discovery at the same time.

Mathematical science, indeed, had then reached such a point that, if neither of them had ever existed, the

principle must inevitably have occurred to some person within a few years. So in our own time the doctrine

of rent, now universally received by political economists, was propounded, almost at the same moment, by

two writers unconnected with each other. Preceding speculators had long been blundering round about it; and

it could not possibly have been missed much longer by the most heedless inquirer. We are inclined to think

that, with respect to every great addition which has been made to the stock of human knowledge, the case has

been similar; that without Copernicus we should have been Copernicans,that without Columbus America

would have been discovered,that without Locke we should have possessed a just theory of the origin of

human ideas. Society indeed has its great men and its little men, as the earth has its mountains and its valleys.

But the inequalities of intellect, like the inequalities of the surface of our globe, bear so small a proportion to

the mass, that, in calculating its great revolutions, they may safely be neglected. The sun illuminates the hills,

while it is still below the horizon, and truth is discovered by the highest minds a little before it becomes

manifest to the multitude. This is the extent of their superiority. They are the first to catch and reflect a light,

which, without their assistance, must, in a short time, be visible to those who lie far beneath them.

The same remark will apply equally to the fine arts. The laws on which depend the progress and decline of

poetry, painting, and sculpture, operate with little less certainty than those which regulate the periodical

returns of heat and cold, of fertility and barrenness. Those who seem to lead the public taste are, in general,

merely outrunning it in the direction which it is spontaneously pursuing. Without a just apprehension of the

laws to which we have alluded the merits and defects of Dryden can be but imperfectly understood. We will,

The ages in which the masterpieces of imagination have been produced have by no means been those in

which taste has been most correct. It seems that the creative faculty, and the critical faculty, cannot exist

together in their highest perfection. The causes of this phenomenon it is not difficult to assign.

It is true that the man who is best able to take a machine to pieces, and who most clearly comprehends the

manner in which all its wheels and springs conduce to its general effect, will be the man most competent to

form another machine of similar power. In all the branches of physical and moral science which admit of

perfect analysis, he who can resolve will be able to combine. But the analysis which criticism can effect of

poetry is necessarily imperfect. One element must for ever elude its researches; and that is the very element

by which poetry is poetry. In the description of nature, for example, a judicious reader will easily detect an

incongruous image. But he will find it impossible to explain in what consists the art of a writer who, in a few

words, brings some spot before him so vividly that he shall know it as if he had lived there from childhood;

while another, employing the same materials, the same verdure, the same water, and the same flowers,

committing no inaccuracy, introducing nothing which can be positively pronounced superfluous, omitting

nothing which can be positively pronounced necessary, shall produce no more effect than an advertisement of

a capital residence and a desirable pleasureground. To take another example: the great features of the

character of Hotspur are obvious to the most superficial reader. We at once perceive that his courage is

splendid, his thirst of glory intense, his animal spirits high, his temper careless, arbitrary, and petulant; that he

indulges his own humour without caring whose feelings he may wound, or whose enmity he may provoke, by

his levity. Thus far criticism will go. But something is still wanting. A man might have all those qualities, and

every other quality which the most minute examiner can introduce into his catalogue of the virtues and faults

of Hotspur, and yet he would not be Hotspur. Almost everything that we have said of him applies equally to

Falconbridge. Yet in the mouth of Falconbridge most of his speeches would seem out of place. In real life this

perpetually occurs. We are sensible of wide differences between men whom, if we were required to describe

them, we should describe in almost the same terms. If we were attempting to draw elaborate characters of

them, we should scarcely be able to point out any strong distinction; yet we approach them with feelings

altogether dissimilar. We cannot conceive of them as using the expressions or the gestures of each other. Let

us suppose that a zoologist should attempt to give an account of some animal, a porcupine for instance, to

people who had never seen it. The porcupine, he might say, is of the class mammalia, and the order glires.

There are whiskers on its face; it is two feet long; it has four toes before, five behind, two fore teeth, and eight

grinders. Its body is covered with hair and quills. And, when all this has been said, would any one of the

auditors have formed a just idea of a porcupine? Would any two of them have formed the same idea? There

might exist innumerable races of animals, possessing all the characteristics which have been mentioned yet

altogether unlike to each other. What the description of our naturalist is to a real porcupine, the remarks of

criticism are to the images of poetry. What it so imperfectly decomposes it cannot perfectly reconstruct. It is

evidently as impossible to produce an Othello or a Macbeth by reversing an analytical process so defective,

as it would be for an anatomist to form a living man out of the fragments of his dissectingroom. In both

cases the vital principle eludes the finest instruments, and vanishes in the very instant in which its seat is

touched. Hence those who, trusting to their critical skill, attempt to write poems give us, not images of things,

but catalogues of qualities. Their characters are allegoriesnot good men and bad men, but cardinal virtues

and deadly sins. We seem to have fallen among the acquaintances of our old friend Christian: sometimes we

meet Mistrust and Timorous; sometimes Mr Hategood and Mr Lovelust; and then again Prudence, Piety

That critical discernment is not sufficient to make men poets, is generally allowed. Why it should keep them

from becoming poets, is not perhaps equally evident; but the fact is, that poetry requires not an examining but

a believing frame of mind. Those feel it most, and write it best, who forget that it is a work of art; to whom its

imitations, like the realities from which they are taken, are subjects, not for connoisseurship, but for tears and

laughter, resentment and affection; who are too much under the influence of the illusion to admire the genius

which has produced it; who are too much frightened for Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus to care whether

the pun about Outis be good or bad; who forget that such a person as Shakspeare ever existed, while they

weep and curse with Lear. It is by giving faith to the creations of the imagination that a man becomes a poet.

It is by treating those creations as deceptions, and by resolving them, as nearly as possible, into their

elements, that he becomes a critic. In the moment in which the skill of the artist is perceived, the spell of the

These considerations account for the absurdities into which the greatest writers have fallen, when they have

attempted to give general rules for composition, or to pronounce judgment on the works of others. They are

unaccustomed to analyse what they feel; they, therefore, perpetually refer their emotions to causes which

have not in the slightest degree tended to produce them. They feel pleasure in reading a book. They never

consider that this pleasure may be the effect of ideas which some unmeaning expression, striking on the first

link of a chain of associations, may have called up in their own mindsthat they have themselves furnished

Cervantes is the delight of all classes of readers. Every schoolboy thumbs to pieces the most wretched

translations of his romance, and knows the lantern jaws of the Knight Errant, and the broad cheeks of the

Squire, as well as the faces of his own playfellows. The most experienced and fastidious judges are amazed at

the perfection of that art which extracts inextinguishable laughter from the greatest of human calamities

without once violating the reverence due to it; at that discriminating delicacy of touch which makes a

character exquisitely ridiculous, without impairing its worth, its grace, or its dignity. In Don Quixote are

several dissertations on the principles of poetic and dramatic writing. No passages in the whole work exhibit

stronger marks of labour and attention; and no passages in any work with which we are acquainted are more

worthless and puerile. In our time they would scarcely obtain admittance into the literary department of the

Morning Post. Every reader of the Divine Comedy must be struck by the veneration which Dante expresses

for writers far inferior to himself. He will not lift up his eyes from the ground in the presence of Brunetto, all

whose works are not worth the worst of his own hundred cantos. He does not venture to walk in the same line

with the bombastic Statius. His admiration of Virgil is absolute idolatry. If, indeed, it had been excited by the

elegant, splendid, and harmonious diction of the Roman poet, it would not have been altogether

unreasonable; but it is rather as an authority on all points of philosophy, than as a work of imagination, that

he values the Aeneid. The most trivial passages he regards as oracles of the highest authority, and of the most

recondite meaning. He describes his conductor as the sea of all wisdomthe sun which heals every

disordered sight. As he judged of Virgil, the Italians of the fourteenth century judged of him; they were proud

of him; they praised him; they struck medals bearing his head; they quarrelled for the honour of possessing

his remains; they maintained professors to expound his writings. But what they admired was not that mighty

imagination which called a new world into existence, and made all its sights and sounds familiar to the eye

and ear of the mind. They said little of those awful and lovely creations on which later critics delight to

dwellFarinata lifting his haughty and tranquil brow from his couch of everlasting firethe lionlike

repose of Sordelloor the light which shone from the celestial smile of Beatrice. They extolled their great

poet for his smattering of ancient literature and history; for his logic and his divinity; for his absurd physics,

and his most absurd metaphysics; for everything but that in which he preeminently excelled. Like the fool in

the story, who ruined his dwelling by digging for gold, which, as he had dreamed, was concealed under its

foundations, they laid waste one of the noblest works of human genius, by seeking in it for buried treasures of

wisdom which existed only in their own wild reveries. The finest passages were little valued till they had

been debased into some monstrous allegory. Louder applause was given to the lecture on fate and freewill,

or to the ridiculous astronomical theories, than to those tremendous lines which disclose the secrets of the

tower of hunger, or to that halftold tale of guilty love, so passionate and so full of tears.

We do not mean to say that the contemporaries of Dante read with less emotion than their descendants of

Ugolino groping among the wasted corpses of his children, or of Francesca starting at the tremulous kiss and

dropping the fatal volume. Far from it. We believe that they admired these things less than ourselves, but that

they felt them more. We should perhaps say that they felt them too much to admire them. The progress of a

nation from barbarism to civilisation produces a change similar to that which takes place during the progress

of an individual from infancy to mature age. What man does not remember with regret the first time that he

read Robinson Crusoe? Then, indeed, he was unable to appreciate the powers of the writer; or, rather, he

neither knew nor cared whether the book had a writer at all. He probably thought it not half so fine as some

rant of Macpherson about darkbrowed Foldath, and whitebosomed Strinadona. He now values Fingal and

Temora only as showing with how little evidence a story may be believed, and with how little merit a book

may be popular. Of the romance of Defoe he entertains the highest opinion. He perceives the hand of a master

in ten thousand touches which formerly he passed by without notice. But, though he understands the merits of

the narrative better than formerly, he is far less interested by it. Xury, and Friday, and pretty Poll, the boat

with the shoulderofmutton sail, and the canoe which could not be brought down to the water edge, the tent

with its hedge and ladders, the preserve of kids, and the den where the old goat died, can never again be to

him the realities which they were. The days when his favourite volume set him upon making wheelbarrows

and chairs, upon digging caves and fencing huts in the garden, can never return. Such is the law of our nature.

Our judgment ripens; our imagination decays. We cannot at once enjoy the flowers of the spring of life and

the fruits of its autumn, the pleasures of close investigation and those of agreeable error. We cannot sit at

once in the front of the stage and behind the scenes. We cannot be under the illusion of the spectacle, while

The chapter in which Fielding describes the behaviour of Partridge at the theatre affords so complete an

illustration of our proposition, that we cannot refrain from quoting some parts of it.

"Partridge gave that credit to Mr Garrick which he had denied to Jones, and fell into so violent a trembling

that his knees knocked against each other. Jones asked him what was the matter, and whether he was afraid of

the warrior upon the stage?'O, la, sir,' said he, 'I perceive now it is what you told me. I am not afraid of

anything, for I know it is but a play; and if it was really a ghost, it could do one no harm at such a distance

and in so much company; and yet, if I was frightened, I am not the only person.''Why, who,' cries Jones,

'dost thou take to be such a coward here besides thyself?''Nay, you may call me a coward if you will; but if

that little man there upon the stage is not frightened, I never saw any man frightened in my life'...He sat with

his eyes fixed partly on the ghost and partly on Hamlet, and with his mouth open; the same passions which

"Little more worth remembering occurred during the play, at the end of which Jones asked him which of the

players he liked best? To this he answered, with some appearance of indignation at the question, 'The King,

without doubt.''Indeed, Mr Partridge,' says Mrs Miller, 'you are not of the same opinion with the town; for

they are all agreed that Hamlet is acted by the best player who was ever on the stage.''He the best player!'

cries Partridge, with a contemptuous sneer; 'why I could act as well as he myself. I am sure if I had seen a

ghost, I should have looked in the very same manner, and done just as he did. And then to be sure, in that

scene, as you called it, between him and his mother, where you told me he acted so fine, why any man, that

is, any good man, that had such a mother, would have done exactly the same. I know you are only joking with

me; but indeed, madam, though I never was at a play in London, yet I have seen acting before in the country,

and the King for my money; he speaks all his words distinctly, and half as loud again as the other. Anybody

In this excellent passage Partridge is represented as a very bad theatrical critic. But none of those who laugh

at him possess the tithe of his sensibility to theatrical excellence. He admires in the wrong place; but he

trembles in the right place. It is indeed because he is so much excited by the acting of Garrick, that he ranks

him below the strutting, mouthing performer, who personates the King. So, we have heard it said that, in

some parts of Spain and Portugal, an actor who should represent a depraved character finely, instead of

calling down the applauses of the audience, is hissed and pelted without mercy. It would be the same in

England, if we, for one moment, thought that Shylock or Iago was standing before us. While the dramatic art

was in its infancy at Athens, it produced similar effects on the ardent and imaginative spectators. It is said

that they blamed Aeschylus for frightening them into fits with his Furies. Herodotus tells us that, when

Phyrnichus produced his tragedy on the fall of Miletus, they fined him in a penalty of a thousand drachmas

for torturing their feelings by so pathetic an exhibition. They did not regard him as a great artist, but merely

as a man who had given them pain. When they woke from the distressing illusion, they treated the author of it

as they would have treated a messenger who should have brought them fatal and alarming tidings which

turned out to be false. In the same manner, a child screams with terror at the sight of a person in an ugly

mask. He has perhaps seen the mask put on. But his imagination is too strong for his reason; and he entreats

We should act in the same manner if the grief and horror produced in us by works of the imagination

amounted to real torture. But in us these emotions are comparatively languid. They rarely affect our appetite

or our sleep. They leave us sufficiently at ease to trace them to their causes, and to estimate the powers which

produce them. Our attention is speedily diverted from the images which call forth our tears to the art by

which those images have been selected and combined. We applaud the genius of the writer. We applaud our

Yet, though we think that in the progress of nations towards refinement the reasoning powers are improved at

the expense of the imagination, we acknowledge that to this rule there are many apparent exceptions. We are

not, however, quite satisfied that they are more than apparent. Men reasoned better, for example, in the time

of Elizabeth than in the time of Egbert; and they also wrote better poetry. But we must distinguish between

poetry as a mental act, and poetry as a species of composition. If we take it in the latter sense, its excellence

depends not solely on the vigour of the imagination, but partly also on the instruments which the imagination

employs. Within certain limits, therefore, poetry may be improving while the poetical faculty is decaying.

The vividness of the picture presented to the reader is not necessarily proportioned to the vividness of the

prototype which exists in the mind of the writer. In the other arts we see this clearly. Should a man, gifted by

nature with all the genius of Canova, attempt to carve a statue without instruction as to the management of his

chisel, or attention to the anatomy of the human body, he would produce something compared with which the

Highlander at the door of a snuff shop would deserve admiration. If an uninitiated Raphael were to attempt a

painting, it would be a mere daub; indeed, the connoisseurs say that the early works of Raphael are little

better. Yet, who can attribute this to want of imagination? Who can doubt that the youth of that great artist

was passed amidst an ideal world of beautiful and majestic forms? Or, who will attribute the difference which

appears between his first rude essays and his magnificent Transfiguration to a change in the constitution of

his mind? In poetry, as in painting and sculpture, it is necessary that the imitator should be well acquainted

with that which he undertakes to imitate, and expert in the mechanical part of his art. Genius will not furnish

him with a vocabulary: it will not teach him what word most exactly corresponds to his idea, and will most

fully convey it to others: it will not make him a great descriptive poet, till he has looked with attention on the

face of nature; or a great dramatist, till he has felt and witnessed much of the influence of the passions.

Information and experience are, therefore, necessary; not for the purpose of strengthening the imagination,

which is never so strong as in people incapable of reasoningsavages, children, madmen, and dreamers; but

for the purpose of enabling the artist to communicate his conceptions to others.

In a barbarous age the imagination exercises a despotic power. So strong is the perception of what is unreal

that it often overpowers all the passions of the mind and all the sensations of the body. At first, indeed, the

phantasm remains undivulged, a hidden treasure, a wordless poetry, an invisible painting, a silent music, a

dream of which the pains and pleasures exist to the dreamer alone, a bitterness which the heart only knoweth,

a joy with which a stranger intermeddleth not. The machinery, by which ideas are to be conveyed from one

person to another, is as yet rude and defective. Between mind and mind there is a great gulf. The imitative

arts do not exist, or are in their lowest state. But the actions of men amply prove that the faculty which gives

birth to those arts is morbidly active. It is not yet the inspiration of poets and sculptors; but it is the

amusement of the day, the terror of the night, the fertile source of wild superstitions. It turns the clouds into

gigantic shapes, and the winds into doleful voices. The belief which springs from it is more absolute and

undoubting than any which can be derived from evidence. It resembles the faith which we repose in our own

sensations. Thus, the Arab, when covered with wounds, saw nothing but the dark eyes and the green kerchief

of a beckoning Houri. The Northern warrior laughed in the pangs of death when he thought of the mead of

The first works of the imagination are, as we have said, poor and rude, not from the want of genius, but from

the want of materials. Phidias could have done nothing with an old tree and a fishbone, or Homer with the

Yet the effect of these early performances, imperfect as they must necessarily be, is immense. All

deficiencies are supplied by the susceptibility of those to whom they are addressed. We all know what

pleasure a wooden doll, which may be bought for sixpence, will afford to a little girl. She will require no

other company. She will nurse it, dress it, and talk to it all day. No grownup man takes half so much delight

in one of the incomparable babies of Chantrey. In the same manner, savages are more affected by the rude

compositions of their bards than nations more advanced in civilisation by the greatest master pieces of

In process of time, the instruments by which the imagination works are brought to perfection. Men have not

more imagination than their rude ancestors. We strongly suspect that they have much less. But they produce

better works of imagination. Thus, up to a certain period, the diminution of the poetical powers is far more

than compensated by the improvement of all the appliances and means of which those powers stand in need.

Then comes the short period of splendid and consummate excellence. And then, from causes against which it

is vain to struggle, poetry begins to decline. The progress of language, which was at first favourable, becomes

fatal to it, and, instead of compensating for the decay of the imagination, accelerates that decay, and renders it

more obvious. When the adventurer in the Arabian tale anointed one of his eyes with the contents of the

magical box, all the riches of the earth, however widely dispersed, however sacredly concealed, became

visible to him. But, when he tried the experiment on both eyes, he was struck with blindness. What the

enchanted elixir was to the sight of the body, language is to the sight of the imagination. At first it calls up a

world of glorious allusions; but, when it becomes too copious, it altogether destroys the visual power.

As the development of the mind proceeds, symbols, instead of being employed to convey images, are

substituted for them. Civilised men think as they trade, not in kind, but by means of a circulating medium. In

these circumstances, the sciences improve rapidly, and criticism among the rest; but poetry, in the highest

sense of the word, disappears. Then comes the dotage of the fine arts, a second childhood, as feeble as the

former, and far more hopeless. This is the age of critical poetry, of poetry by courtesy, of poetry to which the

memory, the judgment, and the wit contribute far more than the imagination. We readily allow that many

works of this description are excellent: we will not contend with those who think them more valuable than the

great poems of an earlier period. We only maintain that they belong to a different species of composition, and

It is some consolation to reflect that this critical school of poetry improves as the science of criticism

improves; and that the science of criticism, like every other science, is constantly tending towards perfection.

In some countries, in our own for example, there has been an interval between the downfall of the creative

school and the rise of the critical, a period during which imagination has been in its decrepitude, and taste in

its infancy. Such a revolutionary interregnum as this will be deformed by every species of extravagance.

The first victory of good taste is over the bombast and conceits which deform such times as these. But

criticism is still in a very imperfect state. What is accidental is for a long time confounded with what is

essential. General theories are drawn from detached facts. How many hours the action of a play may be

allowed to occupy,how many similes an Epic Poet may introduce into his first book,whether a piece,

which is acknowledged to have a beginning and an end, may not be without a middle, and other questions as

puerile as these, formerly occupied the attention of men of letters in France, and even in this country. Poets,

in such circumstances as these, exhibit all the narrowness and feebleness of the criticism by which their

manner has been fashioned. From outrageous absurdity they are preserved indeed by their timidity. But they

perpetually sacrifice nature and reason to arbitrary canons of taste. In their eagerness to avoid the mala

prohibita of a foolish code, they are perpetually rushing on the mala in se. Their great predecessors, it is true,

were as bad critics as themselves, or perhaps worse, but those predecessors, as we have attempted to show,

were inspired by a faculty independent of criticism, and, therefore, wrote well while they judged ill.

In time men begin to take more rational and comprehensive views of literature. The analysis of poetry, which,

as we have remarked, must at best be imperfect, approaches nearer and nearer to exactness. The merits of the

wonderful models of former times are justly appreciated. The frigid productions of a later age are rated at no

more than their proper value. Pleasing and ingenious imitations of the manner of the great masters appear.

Poetry has a partial revival, a Saint Martin's Summer, which, after a period of dreariness and decay, agreeably

reminds us of the splendour of its June. A second harvest is gathered in; though, growing on a spent soil, it

has not the heart of the former. Thus, in the present age, Monti has successfully imitated the style of Dante;

and something of the Elizabethan inspiration has been caught by several eminent countrymen of our own. But

never will Italy produce another Inferno, or England another Hamlet. We look on the beauties of the modern

imaginations with feelings similar to those with which we see flowers disposed in vases, to ornament the

drawingrooms of a capital. We doubtless regard them with pleasure, with greater pleasure, perhaps,

because, in the midst of a place ungenial to them, they remind us of the distant spots on which they flourish

in spontaneous exuberance. But we miss the sap, the freshness, and the bloom. Or, if we may borrow another

illustration from Queen Scheherezade, we would compare the writers of this school to the jewellers who were

employed to complete the unfinished window of the palace of Aladdin. Whatever skill or cost could do was

done. Palace and bazaar were ransacked for precious stones. Yet the artists, with all their dexterity, with all

their assiduity, and with all their vast means, were unable to produce anything comparable to the wonders

The history of every literature with which we are acquainted confirms, we think, the principles which we

have laid down. In Greece we see the imaginative school of poetry gradually fading into the critical.

Aeschylus and Pindar were succeeded by Sophocles, Sophocles by Euripides, Euripides by the Alexandrian

versifiers. Of these last, Theocritus alone has left compositions which deserve to be read. The splendour and

grotesque fairyland of the Old Comedy, rich with such gorgeous hues, peopled with such fantastic shapes,

and vocal alternately with the sweetest peals of music and the loudest bursts of elvish laughter, disappeared

forever. The masterpieces of the New Comedy are known to us by Latin translations of extraordinary merit.

From these translations, and from the expressions of the ancient critics, it is clear that the original

compositions were distinguished by grace and sweetness, that they sparkled with wit, and abounded with

pleasing sentiment; but that the creative power was gone. Julius Caesar called Terence a half Menander,a

The literature of the Romans was merely a continuation of the literature of the Greeks. The pupils started

from the point at which their masters had, in the course of many generations arrived. They thus almost wholly

missed the period of original invention. The only Latin poets whose writings exhibit much vigour of

imagination are Lucretius and Catullus. The Augustan age produced nothing equal to their finer passages.

In France that licensed jester, whose jingling cap and motley coat concealed more genius than ever mustered

in the saloon of Ninon or of Madame Geoffrin, was succeeded by writers as decorous and as tiresome as

The poetry of Italy and of Spain has undergone the same change. But nowhere has the revolution been more

complete and violent than in England. The same person who, when a boy, had clapped his thrilling hands at

the first representation of the Tempest might, without attaining to a marvellous longevity, have lived to read

the earlier works of Prior and Addison. The change, we believe, must, sooner or later, have taken place. But

its progress was accelerated, and its character modified, by the political occurrences of the times, and

particularly by two events, the closing of the theatres under the Commonwealth, and the restoration of the

We have said that the critical and poetical faculties are not only distinct, but almost incompatible. The state of

our literature during the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First is a strong confirmation of this remark. The

greatest works of imagination that the world has ever seen were produced at that period. The national taste, in

the meantime, was to the last degree detestable. Alliterations, puns, antithetical forms of expression lavishly

employed where no corresponding opposition existed between the thoughts expressed, strained allegories,

pedantic allusions, everything, in short, quaint and affected, in matter and manner, made up what was then

considered as fine writing. The eloquence of the bar, the pulpit, and the council board, was deformed by

conceits which would have disgraced the rhyming shepherds of an Italian academy. The king quibbled on the

throne. We might, indeed, console ourselves by reflecting that his majesty was a fool. But the chancellor

quibbled in concert from the woolsack: and the chancellor was Francis Bacon. It is needless to mention

Sidney and the whole tribe of Euphuists; for Shakspeare himself, the greatest poet that ever lived, falls into

the same fault whenever he means to be particularly fine. While he abandons himself to the impulse of his

imagination, his compositions are not only the sweetest and the most sublime, but also the most faultless, that

the world has ever seen. But, as soon as his critical powers come into play, he sinks to the level of Cowley; or

rather he does ill what Cowley did well. All that is bad in his works is bad elaborately, and of malice

aforethought. The only thing wanting to make them perfect was, that he should never have troubled himself

with thinking whether they were good or not. Like the angels in Milton, he sinks "with compulsion and

laborious flight." His natural tendency is upwards. That he may soar, it is only necessary that he should not

struggle to fall. He resembles an American Cacique, who, possessing in unmeasured abundance the metals

which in polished societies are esteemed the most precious, was utterly unconscious of their value, and gave

up treasures more valuable than the imperial crowns of other countries, to secure some gaudy and farfetched

We have attempted to show that, as knowledge is extended and as the reason develops itself, the imitative arts

decay. We should, therefore, expect that the corruption of poetry would commence in the educated classes of

society. And this, in fact, is almost constantly the case. The few great works of imagination which appear in a

critical age are, almost without exception, the works of uneducated men. Thus, at a time when persons of

quality translated French romances, and when the universities celebrated royal deaths in verses about tritons

and fauns, a preaching tinker produced the Pilgrim's Progress. And thus a ploughman startled a generation

which had thought Hayley and Beattie great poets, with the adventures of Tam O'Shanter. Even in the latter

part of the reign of Elizabeth the fashionable poetry had degenerated. It retained few vestiges of the

imagination of earlier times. It had not yet been subjected to the rules of good taste. Affectation had

completely tainted madrigals and sonnets. The grotesque conceits and the tuneless numbers of Donne were,

in the time of James, the favourite models of composition at Whitehall and at the Temple. But, though the

literature of the Court was in its decay, the literature of the people was in its perfection. The Muses had taken

sanctuary in the theatres, the haunts of a class whose taste was not better than that of the Right Honourables

and singular good Lords who admired metaphysical loveverses, but whose imagination retained all its

freshness and vigour; whose censure and approbation might be erroneously bestowed, but whose tears and

laughter was never in the wrong. The infection which had tainted lyric and didactic poetry had but slightly

and partially touched the drama. While the noble and the learned were comparing eyes to burningglasses,

and tears to terrestrial globes, coyness to an enthymeme, absence to a pair of compasses, and an unrequited

passion to the fortieth remainderman in an entail, Juliet leaning from the balcony, and Miranda smiling over

the chessboard, sent home many spectators, as kind and simplehearted as the master and mistress of

No species of fiction is so delightful to us as the old English drama. Even its inferior productions possess a

charm not to be found in any other kind of poetry. It is the most lucid mirror that ever was held up to nature.

The creations of the great dramatists of Athens produce the effect of magnificent sculptures, conceived by a

mighty imagination, polished with the utmost delicacy, embodying ideas of ineffable majesty and beauty, but

cold, pale, and rigid, with no bloom on the cheek, and no speculation in the eye. In all the draperies, the

figures, and the faces, in the lovers and the tyrants, the Bacchanals and the Furies, there is the same marble

chillness and deadness. Most of the characters of the French stage resemble the waxen gentlemen and ladies

in the window of a perfumer, rouged, curled, and bedizened, but fixed in such stiff attitudes, and staring with

eyes expressive of such utter unmeaningness, that they cannot produce an illusion for a single moment. In the

English plays alone is to be found the warmth, the mellowness, and the reality of painting. We know the

The excellence of these works is in a great measure the result of two peculiarities, which the critics of the

French school consider as defects,from the mixture of tragedy and comedy, and from the length and extent

of the action. The former is necessary to render the drama a just representation of a world in which the

laughers and weepers are perpetually jostling each other,in which every event has its serious and ludicrous

side. The latter enables us to form an intimate acquaintance with characters with which we could not possibly

become familiar during the few hours to which the unities restrict the poet. In this respect, the works of

Shakspeare, in particular, are miracles of art. In a piece, which may be read aloud in three hours, we see a

character gradually unfold all its recesses to us. We see it change with the change of circumstances. The

petulant youth rises into the politic and warlike sovereign. The profuse and courteous philanthropist sours

into a hater and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered, by the chastening of affliction, into a pensive

moralist. The veteran general, distinguished by coolness, sagacity, and selfcommand, sinks under a conflict

between love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes, step by

step, to the extremities of human depravity. We trace his progress, from the first dawnings of unlawful

ambition to the cynical melancholy of his impenitent remorse. Yet, in these pieces, there are no unnatural

transitions. Nothing is omitted: nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within

which they are exhibited, they shock us as little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces which we see

every evening and every morning. The magical skill of the poet resembles that of the Dervise in the

Spectator, who condensed all the events of seven years into the single moment during which the king held his

It is deserving of remark, that, at the time of which we speak, the plays even of men not eminently

distinguished by genius, such, for example, as Jonson,were far superior to the best works of imagination

in other departments. Therefore, though we conceive that, from causes which we have already investigated,

our poetry must necessarily have declined, we think that, unless its fate had been accelerated by external

attacks, it might have enjoyed an euthanasia, that genius might have been kept alive by the drama till its place

could, in some degree, be supplied by taste,that there would have been scarcely any interval between the

age of sublime invention and that of agreeable imitation. The works of Shakspeare, which were not

appreciated with any degree of justice before the middle of the eighteenth century, might then have been the

recognised standards of excellence during the latter part of the seventeenth; and he and the great Elizabethan

writers might have been almost immediately succeeded by a generation of poets similar to those who adorn

But the Puritans drove imagination from its last asylum. They prohibited theatrical representations, and

stigmatised the whole race of dramatists as enemies of morality and religion. Much that is objectionable may

be found in the writers whom they reprobated; but whether they took the best measures for stopping the evil

appears to us very doubtful, and must, we think, have appeared doubtful to themselves, when, after the lapse

of a few years, they saw the unclean spirit whom they had cast out return to his old haunts, with seven others

By the extinction of the drama, the fashionable school of poetry,a school without truth of sentiment or

harmony of versification,without the powers of an earlier, or the correctness of a later age,was left to

enjoy undisputed ascendency. A vicious ingenuity, a morbid quickness to perceive resemblances and

analogies between things apparently heterogeneous, constituted almost its only claim to admiration. Suckling

was dead. Milton was absorbed in political and theological controversy. If Waller differed from the Cowleian

sect of writers, he differed for the worse. He had as little poetry as they, and much less wit; nor is the languor

of his verses less offensive than the ruggedness of theirs. In Denham alone the faint dawn of a better manner

But, low as was the state of our poetry during the civil war and the Protectorate, a still deeper fall was at

hand. Hitherto our literature had been idiomatic. In mind as in situation we had been islanders. The

revolutions in our taste, like the revolutions in our government, had been settled without the interference of

strangers. Had this state of things continued, the same just principles of reasoning which, about this time,

were applied with unprecedented success to every part of philosophy would soon have conducted our

ancestors to a sounder code of criticism. There were already strong signs of improvement. Our prose had at

length worked itself clear from those quaint conceits which still deformed almost every metrical composition.

The parliamentary debates, and the diplomatic correspondence of that eventful period, had contributed much

to this reform. In such bustling times, it was absolutely necessary to speak and write to the purpose. The

absurdities of Puritanism had, perhaps, done more. At the time when that odious style, which deforms the

writings of Hall and of Lord Bacon, was almost universal, had appeared that stupendous work, the English

Bible, a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the

whole extent of its beauty and power. The respect which the translators felt for the original prevented them

from adding any of the hideous decorations then in fashion. The groundwork of the version, indeed, was of an

earlier age. The familiarity with which the Puritans, on almost every occasion, used the Scriptural phrases

was no doubt very ridiculous; but it produced good effects. It was a cant; but it drove out a cant far more

The highest kind of poetry is, in a great measure, independent of those circumstances which regulate the style

of composition in prose. But with that inferior species of poetry which succeeds to it the case is widely

different. In a few years, the good sense and good taste which had weeded out affectation from moral and

political treatises would, in the natural course of things, have effected a similar reform in the sonnet and the

ode. The rigour of the victorious sectaries had relaxed. A dominant religion is never ascetic. The Government

connived at theatrical representations. The influence of Shakspeare was once more felt. But darker days were

approaching. A foreign yoke was to be imposed on our literature. Charles, surrounded by the companions of

his long exile, returned to govern a nation which ought never to have cast him out or never to have received

him back. Every year which he had passed among strangers had rendered him more unfit to rule his

countrymen. In France he had seen the refractory magistracy humbled, and royal prerogative, though

exercised by a foreign priest in the name of a child, victorious over all opposition. This spectacle naturally

gratified a prince to whose family the opposition of Parliaments had been so fatal. Politeness was his solitary

good quality. The insults which he had suffered in Scotland had taught him to prize it. The effeminacy and

apathy of his disposition fitted him to excel in it. The elegance and vivacity of the French manners fascinated

him. With the political maxims and the social habits of his favourite people, he adopted their taste in

composition, and, when seated on the throne, soon rendered it fashionable, partly by direct patronage, but still

more by that contemptible policy, which, for a time, made England the last of the nations, and raised Louis

the Fourteenth to a height of power and fame, such as no French sovereign had ever before attained.

It was to please Charles that rhyme was first introduced into our plays. Thus, a rising blow, which would at

any time have been mortal, was dealt to the English Drama, then just recovering from its languishing

condition. Two detestable manners, the indigenous and the imported, were now in a state of alternate conflict

and amalgamation. The bombastic meanness of the new style was blended with the ingenious absurdity of the

old; and the mixture produced something which the world had never before seen, and which, we hope, it will

never see again,something, by the side of which the worst nonsense of all other ages appears to

advantagesomething, which those who have attempted to caricature it have, against their will, been forced

to flatter of which the tragedy of Bayes is a very favourable specimen. What Lord Dorset observed to

"As skilful divers to the bottom fall Swifter than those who cannot swim at all; So, in this way of writing

From this reproach some clever men of the world must be excepted, and among them Dorset himself. Though

by no means great poets, or even good versifiers, they always wrote with meaning, and sometimes with wit.

Nothing indeed more strongly shows to what a miserable state literature had fallen, than the immense

superiority which the occasional rhymes, carelessly thrown on paper by men of this class, possess over the

elaborate productions of almost all the professed authors. The reigning taste was so bad, that the success of a

writer was in inverse proportion to his labour, and to his desire of excellence. An exception must be made for

Butler, who had as much wit and learning as Cowley, and who knew, what Cowley never knew, how to use

them. A great command of good homely English distinguishes him still more from the other writers of the

time. As for Gondibert, those may criticise it who can read it. Imagination was extinct. Taste was depraved.

Poetry, driven from palaces, colleges, and theatres, had found an asylum in the obscure dwelling where a

Great Man, born out of due season, in disgrace, penury, pain and blindness, still kept uncontaminated a

Everything about Milton is wonderful; but nothing is so wonderful as that, in an age so unfavourable to

poetry, he should have produced the greatest of modern epic poems. We are not sure that this is not in some

degree to be attributed to his want of sight. The imagination is notoriously most active when the external

world is shut out. In sleep its illusions are perfect. They produce all the effect of realities. In darkness its

visions are always more distinct than in the light. Every person who amuses himself with what is called

building castles in the air must have experienced this. We know artists who, before they attempt to draw a

face from memory, close their eyes, that they may recall a more perfect image of the features and the

expression. We are therefore inclined to believe that the genius of Milton may have been preserved from the

influence of times so unfavourable to it by his infirmity. Be this as it may, his works at first enjoyed a very

small share of popularity. To be neglected by his contemporaries was the penalty which he paid for

surpassing them. His great poem was not generally studied or admired till writers far inferior to him had, by

obsequiously cringing to the public taste, acquired sufficient favour to reform it.

Of these, Dryden was the most eminent. Amidst the crowd of authors who, during the earlier years of Charles

the Second, courted notoriety by every species of absurdity and affectation, he speedily became conspicuous.

No man exercised so much influence on the age. The reason is obvious. On no man did the age exercise so

much influence. He was perhaps the greatest of those whom we have designated as the critical poets; and his

literary career exhibited, on a reduced scale, the whole history of the school to which he belonged,the

rudeness and extravagance of its infancy,the propriety, the grace, the dignified good sense, the temperate

splendour of its maturity. His imagination was torpid, till it was awakened by his judgment. He began with

quaint parallels and empty mouthing. He gradually acquired the energy of the satirist, the gravity of the

moralist, the rapture of the lyric poet. The revolution through which English literature has been passing, from

the time of Cowley to that of Scott, may be seen in miniature within the compass of his volumes.

His life divides itself into two parts. There is some debatable ground on the common frontier; but the line

may be drawn with tolerable accuracy. The year 1678 is that on which we should be inclined to fix as the date

of a great change in his manner. During the preceding period appeared some of his courtly panegyricshis

Annus Mirabilis, and most of his plays; indeed, all his rhyming tragedies. To the subsequent period belong

his best dramas,All for Love, the Spanish Friar, and Sebastian, his satires, his translations, his didactic

Of the small pieces which were presented to chancellors and princes it would scarcely be fair to speak. The

greatest advantage which the Fine Arts derive from the extension of knowledge is, that the patronage of

individuals becomes unnecessary. Some writers still affect to regret the age of patronage. None but bad

writers have reason to regret it. It is always an age of general ignorance. Where ten thousand readers are

eager for the appearance of a book, a small contribution from each makes up a splendid remuneration for the

author. Where literature is a luxury, confined to few, each of them must pay high. If the Empress Catherine,

for example, wanted an epic poem, she must have wholly supported the poet;just as, in a remote country

village, a man who wants a muttonchop is sometimes forced to take the whole sheep;a thing which never

happens where the demand is large. But men who pay largely for the gratification of their taste, will expect to

have it united with some gratification to their vanity. Flattery is carried to a shameless extent; and the habit of

flattery almost inevitably introduces a false taste into composition. Its language is made up of hyperbolical

commonplaces,offensive from their triteness,still more offensive from their extravagance. In no school

is the trick of overstepping the modesty of nature so speedily acquired. The writer, accustomed to find

exaggeration acceptable and necessary on one subject, uses it on all. It is not strange, therefore, that the early

panegyrical verses of Dryden should be made up of meanness and bombast. They abound with the conceits

which his immediate predecessors had brought into fashion. But his language and his versification were

The Annus Mirabilis shows great command of expression, and a fine ear for heroic rhyme. Here its merits

end. Not only has it no claim to be called poetry, but it seems to be the work of a man who could never, by

any possibility, write poetry. Its affected similes are the best part of it. Gaudy weeds present a more

encouraging spectacle than utter barrenness. There is scarcely a single stanza in this long work to which the

imagination seems to have contributed anything. It is produced, not by creation, but by construction. It is

made up, not of pictures, but of inferences. We will give a single instance, and certainly a favourable

instance,a quatrain which Johnson has praised. Dryden is describing the seafight with the Dutch

"Amidst whole heaps of spices lights a ball; And now their odours armed against them fly. Some preciously

The poet should place his readers, as nearly as possible, in the situation of the sufferers or the spectators. His

narration ought to produce feelings similar to those which would be excited by the event itself. Is this the case

here? Who, in a sea fight, ever thought of the price of the china which beats out the brains of a sailor; or of

the odour of the splinter which shatters his leg? It is not by an act of the imagination, at once calling up the

scene before the interior eye, but by painful meditation,by turning the subject round and round,by

tracing out facts into remote consequences,that these incongruous topics are introduced into the

description. Homer, it is true, perpetually uses epithets which are not peculiarly appropriate. Achilles is the

swiftfooted, when he is sitting still. Ulysses is the muchenduring, when he has nothing to endure. Every

spear casts a long shadow, every ox has crooked horns, and every woman a high bosom, though these

particulars may be quite beside the purpose. In our old ballads a similar practice prevails. The gold is always

red, and the ladies always gay, though nothing whatever may depend on the hue of the gold, or the temper of

the ladies. But these adjectives are mere customary additions. They merge in the substantives to which they

are attached. If they at all colour the idea, it is with a tinge so slight as in no respect to alter the general effect.

In the passage which we have quoted from Dryden the case is very different. "Preciously" and "aromatic"

divert our whole attention to themselves, and dissolve the image of the battle in a moment. The whole poem

reminds us of Lucan, and of the worst parts of Lucan,the sea fight in the Bay of Marseilles, for example.

The description of the two fleets during the night is perhaps the only passage which ought to be exempted

from this censure. If it was from the Annus Mirabilis that Milton formed his opinion, when he pronounced

Dryden a good rhymer but no poet, he certainly judged correctly. But Dryden was, as we have said, one of

those writers in whom the period of imagination does not precede, but follow, the period of observation and

His plays, his rhyming plays in particular, are admirable subjects for those who wish to study the morbid

anatomy of the drama. He was utterly destitute of the power of exhibiting real human beings. Even in the far

inferior talent of composing characters out of those elements into which the imperfect process of our reason

can resolve them, he was very deficient. His men are not even good personifications; they are not

wellassorted assemblages of qualities. Now and then, indeed, he seizes a very coarse and marked

distinction, and gives us, not a likeness, but a strong caricature, in which a single peculiarity is protruded, and

everything else neglected; like the Marquis of Granby at an inndoor, whom we know by nothing but his

baldness; or Wilkes, who is Wilkes only in his squint. These are the best specimens of his skill. For most of

his pictures seem, like Turkey carpets, to have been expressly designed not to resemble anything in the

The latter manner he practises most frequently in his tragedies, the former in his comedies. The comic

characters are, without mixture, loathsome and despicable. The men of Etherege and Vanbrugh are bad

enough. Those of Smollett are perhaps worse. But they do not approach to the Celadons, the Wildbloods, the

Woodalls, and the Rhodophils of Dryden. The vices of these last are set off by a certain fierce hard

impudence, to which we know nothing comparable. Their love is the appetite of beasts; their friendship the

confederacy of knaves. The ladies seem to have been expressly created to form helps meet for such

gentlemen. In deceiving and insulting their old fathers they do not perhaps exceed the license which, by

immemorial prescription, has been allowed to heroines. But they also cheat at cards, rob strong boxes, put up

their favours to auction, betray their friends, abuse their rivals in the style of Billingsgate, and invite their

lovers in the language of the Piazza. These, it must be remembered, are not the valets and waitingwomen,

the Mascarilles and Nerines, but the recognised heroes and heroines who appear as the representatives of

good society, and who, at the end of the fifth act, marry and live very happily ever after. The sensuality,

baseness, and malice of their natures is unredeemed by any quality of a different description,by any touch

of kindness,or even by any honest burst of hearty hatred and revenge. We are in a world where there is no

humanity, no veracity, no sense of shame,a world for which any goodnatured man would gladly take in

exchange the society of Milton's devils. But as soon as we enter the regions of Tragedy, we find a great

change. There is no lack of fine sentiment there. Metastasio is surpassed in his own department. Scuderi is

outscuderied. We are introduced to people whose proceedings we can trace to no motive,of whose

feelings we can form no more idea than of a sixth sense. We have left a race of creatures, whose love is as

delicate and affectionate as the passion which an alderman feels for a turtle. We find ourselves among beings,

whose love is a purely disinterested emotion,a loyalty extending to passive obedience,a religion, like

that of the Quietists, unsupported by any sanction of hope or fear. We see nothing but despotism without

We will give a few instances. In Aurengzebe, Arimant, governor of Agra, falls in love with his prisoner

Indamora. She rejects his suit with scorn; but assures him that she shall make great use of her power over

"Do not: your anger, like your love, is vain: Whene'er I please, you must be pleased again. Knowing what

This is no idle menace. She soon brings a letter addressed to his rival,orders him to read it,asks him

whether he thinks it sufficiently tender,and finally commands him to carry it himself. Such tyranny as this,

it may be thought, would justify resistance. Arimant does indeed venture to remonstrate:

"This fatal paper rather let me tear, Than, like Bellerophon, my sentence bear."

"You may; but 'twill not be your best advice; 'Twill only give me pains of writing twice. You know you must

Poor Arimant seems to be of the same opinion. He mutters something about fate and freewill, and walks off

In the Indian Emperor, Montezuma presents Almeria with a garland as a token of his love, and offers to make

"I take this garland, not as given by you; But as my merit's and my beauty's due; As for the crown which you,

In return for such proofs of tenderness as these, her admirer consents to murder his two sons and a benefactor

to whom he feels the warmest gratitude. Lyndaraxa, in the Conquest of Granada, assumes the same lofty tone

"Lynd. And when did I my power so far resign, That you should regulate each look of mine?

That these passages violate all historical propriety, that sentiments to which nothing similar was ever even

affected except by the cavaliers of Europe, are transferred to Mexico and Agra, is a light accusation. We have

no objection to a conventional world, an Illyrian puritan, or a Bohemian seaport. While the faces are good,

we care little about the background. Sir Joshua Reynolds says that the curtains and hangings in an historical

painting ought to be, not velvet or cotton, but merely drapery. The same principle should be applied to poetry

and romance. The truth of character is the first object; the truth of place and time is to be considered only in

the second place. Puff himself could tell the actor to turn out his toes, and remind him that Keeper Hatton was

a great dancer. We wish that, in our own time, a writer of a very different order from Puff had not too often

We blame Dryden, not because the persons of his dramas are not Moors or Americans, but because they are

not men and women;not because love, such as he represents it, could not exist in a harem or in a wigwam,

but because it could not exist anywhere. As is the love of his heroes, such are all their other emotions. All

their qualities, their courage, their generosity, their pride, are on the same colossal scale. Justice and prudence

are virtues which can exist only in a moderate degree, and which change their nature and their name if pushed

to excess. Of justice and prudence, therefore, Dryden leaves his favourites destitute. He did not care to give

them what he could not give without measure. The tyrants and ruffians are merely the heroes altered by a few

touches, similar to those which transformed the honest face of Sir Roger de Coverley into the Saracen's head.

It is in the tragicomedies that these absurdities strike us most. The two races of men, or rather the angels and

the baboons, are there presented to us together. We meet in one scene with nothing but gross, selfish,

unblushing, lying libertines of both sexes, who, as a punishment, we suppose, for their depravity, are

condemned to talk nothing but prose. But, as soon as we meet with people who speak in verse, we know that

we are in society which would have enraptured the Cathos and Madelon of Moliere, in society for which

Oroondates would have too little of the lover, and Clelia too much of the coquette.

As Dryden was unable to render his plays interesting by means of that which is the peculiar and appropriate

excellence of the drama, it was necessary that he should find some substitute for it. In his comedies he

supplied its place, sometimes by wit, but more frequently by intrigue, by disguises, mistakes of persons,

dialogues at cross purposes, hairbreadth escapes, perplexing concealments, and surprising disclosures. He

In his tragedies he trusted, and not altogether without reason, to his diction and his versification. It was on

this account, in all probability, that he so eagerly adopted, and so reluctantly abandoned, the practice of

rhyming in his plays. What is unnatural appears less unnatural in that species of verse than in lines which

approach more nearly to common conversation; and in the management of the heroic couplet Dryden has

never been equalled. It is unnecessary to urge any arguments against a fashion now universally condemned.

But it is worthy of observation, that, though Dryden was deficient in that talent which blank verse exhibits to

the greatest advantage, and was certainly the best writer of heroic rhyme in our language, yet the plays which

have, from the time of their first appearance, been considered as his best, are in blank verse. No experiment

It must be allowed that the worst even of the rhyming tragedies contains good description and magnificent

rhetoric. But, even when we forget that they are plays, and, passing by their dramatic improprieties, consider

them with reference to the language, we are perpetually disgusted by passages which it is difficult to conceive

how any author could have written, or any audience have tolerated, rants in which the raving violence of the

manner forms a strange contrast with the abject tameness of the thought. The author laid the whole fault on

the audience, and declared that, when he wrote them, he considered them bad enough to please. This defence

is unworthy of a man of genius, and after all, is no defence. Otway pleased without rant; and so might Dryden

have done, if he had possessed the powers of Otway. The fact is, that he had a tendency to bombast, which,

though subsequently corrected by time and thought, was never wholly removed, and which showed itself in

Some indulgent critics have represented this failing as an indication of genius, as the profusion of unlimited

wealth, the wantonness of exuberant vigour. To us it seems to bear a nearer affinity to the tawdriness of

poverty, or the spasms and convulsions of weakness. Dryden surely had not more imagination than Homer,

Dante, or Milton, who never fall into this vice. The swelling diction of Aeschylus and Isaiah resembles that of

Almanzor and Maximin no more than the tumidity of a muscle resembles the tumidity of a boil. The former is

symptomatic of health and strength, the latter of debility and disease. If ever Shakspeare rants, it is not when

his imagination is hurrying him along, but when he is hurrying his imagination along,when his mind is for

a moment jaded,when, as was said of Euripides, he resembles a lion, who excites his own fury by lashing

himself with his tail. What happened to Shakspeare from the occasional suspension of his powers happened

to Dryden from constant impotence. He, like his confederate Lee, had judgment enough to appreciate the

great poets of the preceding age, but not judgment enough to shun competition with them. He felt and

admired their wild and daring sublimity. That it belonged to another age than that in which he lived and

required other talents than those which he possessed, that, in aspiring to emulate it, he was wasting, in a

hopeless attempt, powers which might render him preeminent in a different career, was a lesson which he

did not learn till late. As those knavish enthusiasts, the French prophets, courted inspiration by mimicking the

writhings, swoonings, and gaspings which they considered as its symptoms, he attempted, by affected fits of

poetical fury, to bring on a real paroxysm; and, like them, he got nothing but his distortions for his pains.

Horace very happily compares those who, in his time, imitated Pindar to the youth who attempted to fly to

heaven on waxen wings, and who experienced so fatal and ignominious a fall. His own admirable good sense

preserved him from this error, and taught him to cultivate a style in which excellence was within his reach.

Dryden had not the same selfknowledge. He saw that the greatest poets were never so successful as when

they rushed beyond the ordinary bounds, and that some inexplicable good fortune preserved them from

tripping even when they staggered on the brink of nonsense. He did not perceive that they were guided and

sustained by a power denied to himself. They wrote from the dictation of the imagination; and they found a

response in the imaginations of others. He, on the contrary, sat down to work himself, by reflection and

In looking over the admirable designs which accompany the Faust, we have always been much struck by one

which represents the wizard and the tempter riding at full speed. The demon sits on his furious horse as

heedlessly as if he were reposing on a chair. That he should keep his saddle in such a posture, would seem

impossible to any who did not know that he was secure in the privileges of a superhuman nature. The attitude

of Faust, on the contrary, is the perfection of horsemanship. Poets of the first order might safely write as

desperately as Mephistopheles rode. But Dryden, though admitted to communion with higher spirits, though

armed with a portion of their power, and intrusted with some of their secrets, was of another race. What they

might securely venture to do, it was madness in him to attempt. It was necessary that taste and critical science

We will give a few examples. Nothing can be finer than the description of Hector at the Grecian wall:

o d ar esthore phaidimos Ektor, Nukti thoe atalantos upopia lampe de chalko Smerdaleo, ton eesto peri chroi

doia de chersi Dour echen ouk an tis min erukakoi antibolesas, Nosphi theun, ot esalto pulas puri d osse

dedeei. Autika d oi men teichos uperbasan, oi de kat autas Poietas esechunto pulas Danaioi d ephobethen

What daring expressions! Yet how significant! How picturesque! Hector seems to rise up in his strength and

fury. The gloom of night in his frown,the fire burning in his eyes,the javelins and the blazing

armour,the mighty rush through the gates and down the battlements,the trampling and the infinite roar

Dryden has described a very similar event in Maximin, and has done his best to be sublime, as follows:

"There with a forest of their darts he strove, And stood like Capaneus defying Jove; With his broad sword the

boldest beating down, Till Fate grew pale, lest he should win the town, And turn'd the iron leaves of its dark

How exquisite is the imagery of the fairysongs in the Tempest and the Midsummer Night's Dream; Ariel

riding through the twilight on the bat, or sucking in the bells of flowers with the bee; or the little

bowerwomen of Titania, driving the spiders from the couch of the Queen! Dryden truly said, that

"Shakspeare's magic could not copied be; Within that circle none durst walk but he."

It would have been well if he had not himself dared to step within the enchanted line, and drawn on himself a

fate similar to that which, according to the old superstition, punished such presumptuous interference. The

"Merry, merry, merry, we sail from the East, Halftippled at a rainbow feast. In the bright moonshine, while

winds whistle loud, Tivy, tivy, tivy, we mount and we fly, All racking along in a downy white cloud; And

lest our leap from the sky prove too far, We slide on the back of a new falling star, And drop from above In a

These are very favourable instances. Those who wish for a bad one may read the dying speeches of Maximin,

If Dryden had died before the expiration of the first of the periods into which we have divided his literary life,

he would have left a reputation, at best, little higher than that of Lee or Davenant. He would have been known

only to men of letters; and by them he would have been mentioned as a writer who threw away, on subjects

which he was incompetent to treat, powers which, judiciously employed, might have raised him to eminence;

whose diction and whose numbers had sometimes very high merit, but all whose works were blemished by a

false taste, and by errors of gross negligence. A few of his prologues and epilogues might perhaps still have

been remembered and quoted. In these little pieces he early showed all the powers which afterwards rendered

him the greatest of modern satirists. But, during the latter part of his life, he gradually abandoned the drama.

His plays appeared at longer intervals. He renounced rhyme in tragedy. His language became less turgidhis

characters less exaggerated. He did not indeed produce correct representations of human nature; but he

ceased to daub such monstrous chimeras as those which abound in his earlier pieces. Here and there passages

occur worthy of the best ages of the British stage. The style which the drama requires changes with every

change of character and situation. He who can vary his manner to suit the variation is the great dramatist; but

he who excels in one manner only will, when that manner happens to be appropriate, appear to be a great

dramatist; as the hands of a watch which does not go point right once in the twelve hours. Sometimes there is

a scene of solemn debate. This a mere rhetorician may write as well as the greatest tragedian that ever lived.

We confess that to us the speech of Sempronius in Cato seems very nearly as good as Shakspeare could have

made it. But when the senate breaks up, and we find that the lovers and their mistresses, the hero, the villain,

and the deputyvillain, all continue to harangue in the same style, we perceive the difference between a man

who can write a play and a man who can write a speech. In the same manner, wit, a talent for description, or a

talent for narration, may, for a time, pass for dramatic genius. Dryden was an incomparable reasoner in verse.

He was conscious of his power; he was proud of it; and the authors of the Rehearsal justly charged him with

abusing it. His warriors and princesses are fond of discussing points of amorous casuistry, such as would

have delighted a Parliament of Love. They frequently go still deeper, and speculate on philosophical

There were, however, some occasions which absolutely required this peculiar talent. Then Dryden was indeed

at home. All his best scenes are of this description. They are all between men; for the heroes of Dryden, like

many other gentlemen, can never talk sense when ladies are in company. They are all intended to exhibit the

empire of reason over violent passion. We have two interlocutors, the one eager and impassioned, the other

high, cool, and judicious. The composed and rational character gradually acquires the ascendency. His fierce

companion is first inflamed to rage by his reproaches, then overawed by his equanimity, convinced by his

arguments, and soothed by his persuasions. This is the case in the scene between Hector and Troilus, in that

between Antony and Ventidius, and in that between Sebastian and Dorax. Nothing of the same kind in

Shakspeare is equal to them, except the quarrel between Brutus and Cassius, which is worth them all three.

Some years before his death, Dryden altogether ceased to write for the stage. He had turned his powers in a

new direction, with success the most splendid and decisive. His taste had gradually awakened his creative

faculties. The first rank in poetry was beyond his reach; but he challenged and secured the most honourable

place in the second. His imagination resembled the wings of an ostrich; it enabled him to run, though not to

soar. When he attempted the highest flights, he became ridiculous; but, while he remained in a lower region,

All his natural and all his acquired powers fitted him to found a good critical school of poetry. Indeed he

carried his reforms too far for his age. After his death our literature retrograded; and a century was necessary

to bring it back to the point at which he left it. The general soundness and healthfulness of his mental

constitution, his information, of vast superficies, though of small volume, his wit scarcely inferior to that of

the most distinguished followers of Donne, his eloquence, grave, deliberate, and commanding, could not save

him from disgraceful failure as a rival of Shakspeare, but raised him far above the level of Boileau. His

command of language was immense. With him died the secret of the old poetical diction of England,the art

of producing rich effects by familiar words. In the following century it was as completely lost as the Gothic

method of painting glass, and was but poorly supplied by the laborious and tesselated imitations of Mason

and Gray. On the other hand, he was the first writer under whose skilful management the scientific

vocabulary fell into natural and pleasing verse. In this department, he succeeded as completely as his

contemporary Gibbons succeeded in the similar enterprise of carving the most delicate flowers from heart of

oak. The toughest and most knotty parts of language became ductile at his touch. His versification, in the

same manner, while it gave the first model of that neatness and precision which the following generation

esteemed so highly, exhibited at the same time, the last examples of nobleness, freedom, variety of pause, and

cadence. His tragedies in rhyme, however worthless in themselves, had at least served the purpose of

nonsenseverses; they had taught him all the arts of melody which the heroic couplet admits. For bombast,

his prevailing vice, his new subjects gave little opportunity; his better taste gradually discarded it.

He possessed, as we have said, in a preeminent degree the power of reasoning in verse; and this power was

now peculiarly useful to him. His logic is by no means uniformly sound. On points of criticism, he always

reasons ingeniously; and when he is disposed to be honest, correctly. But the theological and political

questions which he undertook to treat in verse were precisely those which he understood least. His

arguments, therefore, are often worthless. But the manner in which they are stated is beyond all praise. The

style is transparent. The topics follow each other in the happiest order. The objections are drawn up in such a

manner that the whole fire of the reply may be brought to bear on them. The circumlocutions which are

substituted for technical phrases are clear, neat, and exact. The illustrations at once adorn and elucidate the

reasoning. The sparkling epigrams of Cowley, and the simple garrulity of the burlesque poets of Italy, are

alternately employed, in the happiest manner, to give effect to what is obvious or clearness to what is

His literary creed was catholic, even to latitudinarianism; not from any want of acuteness, but from a

disposition to be easily satisfied. He was quick to discern the smallest glimpse of merit; he was indulgent

even to gross improprieties, when accompanied by any redeeming talent. When he said a severe thing, it was

to serve a temporary purpose,to support an argument, or to tease a rival. Never was so able a critic so free

from fastidiousness. He loved the old poets, especially Shakspeare. He admired the ingenuity which Donne

and Cowley had so wildly abused. He did justice, amidst the general silence, to the memory of Milton. He

praised to the skies the schoolboy lines of Addison. Always looking on the fair side of every object, he

admired extravagance on account of the invention which he supposed it to indicate; he excused affectation in

favour of wit; he tolerated even tameness for the sake of the correctness which was its concomitant.

It was probably to this turn of mind, rather than to the more disgraceful causes which Johnson has assigned,

that we are to attribute the exaggeration which disfigures the panegyrics of Dryden. No writer, it must be

owned, has carried the flattery of dedication to a greater length. But this was not, we suspect, merely

interested servility: it was the overflowing of a mind singularly disposed to admiration,of a mind which

diminished vices, and magnified virtues and obligations. The most adulatory of his addresses is that in which

he dedicates the State of Innocence to Mary of Modena. Johnson thinks it strange that any man should use

such language without selfdetestation. But he has not remarked that to the very same work is prefixed an

eulogium on Milton, which certainly could not have been acceptable at the Court of Charles the Second.

Many years later, when Whig principles were in a great measure triumphant, Sprat refused to admit a

monument of John Phillips into Westminster Abbeybecause, in the epitaph, the name of Milton

incidentally occurred. The walls of his church, he declared, should not be polluted by the name of a

republican! Dryden was attached, both by principle and interest, to the Court. But nothing could deaden his

sensibility to excellence. We are unwilling to accuse him severely, because the same disposition, which

prompted him to pay so generous a tribute to the memory of a poet whom his patrons detested, hurried him

into extravagance when he described a princess distinguished by the splendour of her beauty and the

This is an amiable temper; but it is not the temper of great men. Where there is elevation of character, there

will be fastidiousness. It is only in novels and on tombstones that we meet with people who are indulgent to

the faults of others, and unmerciful to their own; and Dryden, at all events, was not one of these paragons.

His charity was extended most liberally to others; but it certainly began at home. In taste he was by no means

deficient. His critical works are, beyond all comparison, superior to any which had, till then, appeared in

England. They were generally intended as apologies for his own poems, rather than as expositions of general

principles; he, therefore, often attempts to deceive the reader by sophistry which could scarcely have

deceived himself. His dicta are the dicta, not of a judge, but of an advocate:often of an advocate in an

unsound cause. Yet, in the very act of misrepresenting the laws of composition, he shows how well he

understands them. But he was perpetually acting against his better knowledge. His sins were sins against

light. He trusted that what was bad would be pardoned for the sake of what was good. What was good, he

took no pains to make better. He was not, like most persons who rise to eminence, dissatisfied even with his

best productions. He had set up no unattainable standard of perfection, the contemplation of which might at

once improve and mortify him. His path was not attended by an unapproachable mirage of excellence, for

ever receding, and for ever pursued. He was not disgusted by the negligence of others; and he extended the

same toleration to himself. His mind was of a slovenly character,fond of splendour, but indifferent to

neatness. Hence most of his writings exhibit the sluttish magnificence of a Russian noble, all vermin and

diamonds, dirty linen and inestimable sables. Those faults which spring from affectation, time and thought in

a great measure removed from his poems. But his carelessness he retained to the last. If towards the close of

his life he less frequently went wrong from negligence, it was only because long habits of composition

rendered it more easy to go right. In his best pieces we find false rhymes,triplets, in which the third line

appears to be a mere intruder, and, while it breaks the music, adds nothing to the meaning,gigantic

Alexandrines of fourteen and sixteen syllables, and truncated verses for which he never troubled himself to

Such are the beauties and the faults which may be found in profusion throughout the later works of Dryden.

A more just and complete estimate of his natural and acquired powers,of the merits of his style and of its

blemishes,may be formed from the Hind and Panther, than from any of his other writings. As a didactic

poem, it is far superior to the Religio Laici. The satirical parts, particularly the character of Burnet, are

scarcely inferior to the best passages in Absalom and Achitophel. There are, moreover, occasional touches of

a tenderness which affects us more, because it is decent, rational, and manly, and reminds us of the best

scenes in his tragedies. His versification sinks and swells in happy unison with the subject; and his wealth of

language seems to be unlimited. Yet, the carelessness with which he has constructed his plot, and the

innumerable inconsistencies into which he is every moment falling, detract much from the pleasure which

In Absalom and Achitophel he hit upon a new and rich vein, which he worked with signal success. They

ancient satirists were the subjects of a despotic government. They were compelled to abstain from political

topics, and to confine their attention to the frailties of private life. They might, indeed, sometimes venture to

Thus Juvenal immortalised the obsequious senators who met to decide the fate of the memorable turbot. His

fourth satire frequently reminds us of the great political poem of Dryden; but it was not written till Domitian

had fallen: and it wants something of the peculiar flavour which belongs to contemporary invective alone. His

anger has stood so long that, though the body is not impaired, the effervescence, the first cream, is gone.

Boileau lay under similar restraints; and, if he had been free from all restraints, would have been no match for

The advantages which Dryden derived from the nature of his subject he improved to the very utmost. His

manner is almost perfect. The style of Horace and Boileau is fit only for light subjects. The Frenchman did

indeed attempt to turn the theological reasonings of the Provincial Letters into verse, but with very indifferent

success. The glitter of Pope is gold. The ardour of Persius is without brilliancy. Magnificent versification and

ingenious combinations rarely harmonise with the expression of deep feeling. In Juvenal and Dryden alone

we have the sparkle and the heat together. Those great satirists succeeded in communicating the fervour of

their feelings to materials the most incombustible, and kindled the whole mass into a blaze, at once dazzling

and destructive. We cannot, indeed, think, without regret, of the part which so eminent a writer as Dryden

took in the disputes of that period. There was, no doubt, madness and wickedness on both sides. But there

was liberty on the one, and despotism on the other. On this point, however, we will not dwell. At Talavera the

English and French troops for a moment suspended their conflict, to drink of a stream which flowed between

them. The shells were passed across from enemy to enemy without apprehension or molestation. We, in the

same manner, would rather assist our political adversaries to drink with us of that fountain of intellectual

pleasure, which should be the common refreshment of both parties, than disturb and pollute it with the havoc

Macflecnoe is inferior to Absalom and Achitophel only in the subject. In the execution it is even superior.

But the greatest work of Dryden was the last, the Ode on Saint Cecilia's Day. It is the masterpiece of the

second class of poetry, and ranks but just below the great models of the first. It reminds us of the Pedasus of

By comparing it with the impotent ravings of the heroic tragedies we may measure the progress which the

mind of Dryden had made. He had learned to avoid a too audacious competition with higher natures, to keep

at a distance from the verge of bombast or nonsense, to venture on no expression which did not convey a

distinct idea to his own mind. There is none of that "darkness visible" of style which he had formerly

affected, and in which the greatest poets only can succeed. Everything is definite, significant, and

picturesque. His early writings resembled the gigantic works of those Chinese gardeners who attempt to rival

nature herself, to form cataracts of terrific height and sound, to raise precipitous ridges of mountains, and to

imitate in artificial plantations the vastness and the gloom of some primeval forest. This manner he

abandoned; nor did he ever adopt the Dutch taste which Pope affected, the trim parterres, and the rectangular

walks. He rather resembled our Kents and Browns, who imitating the great features of landscape without

emulating them, consulting the genius of the place, assisting nature and carefully disguising their art,

We are, on the whole, inclined to regret that Dryden did not accomplish his purpose of writing an epic poem.

It certainly would not have been a work of the highest rank. It would not have rivalled the Iliad, the Odyssey,

or the Paradise Lost; but it would have been superior to the productions of Apollonius, Lucan, or Statius, and

not inferior to the Jerusalem Delivered. It would probably have been a vigorous narrative, animated with

something of the spirit of the old romances, enriched with much splendid description, and interspersed with

fine declamations and disquisitions. The danger of Dryden would have been from aiming too high; from

dwelling too much, for example, on his angels of kingdoms, and attempting a competition with that great

writer who in his own time had so incomparably succeeded in representing to us the sights and sounds of

another world. To Milton, and to Milton alone, belonged the secrets of the great deep, the beach of sulphur,

the ocean of fire, the palaces of the fallen dominations, glimmering through the everlasting shade, the silent

wilderness of verdure and fragrance where armed angels kept watch over the sleep of the first lovers, the

portico of diamond, the sea of jasper, the sapphire pavement empurpled with celestial roses, and the infinite

ranks of the Cherubim, blazing with adamant and gold. The council, the tournament, the procession, the

crowded cathedral, the camp, the guardroom, the chase, were the proper scenes for Dryden.

But we have not space to pass in review all the works which Dryden wrote. We, therefore, will not speculate

longer on those which he might possibly have written. He may, on the whole, be pronounced to have been a

man possessed of splendid talents, which he often abused, and of a sound judgment, the admonitions of

which he often neglected; a man who succeeded only in an inferior department of his art, but who, in that

department, succeeded preeminently; and who with a more independent spirit, a more anxious desire of

excellence, and more respect for himself, would, in his own walk, have attained to absolute perfection.

To write history respectablythat is, to abbreviate despatches, and make extracts from speeches, to

intersperse in due proportion epithets of praise and abhorrence, to draw up antithetical characters of great

men, setting forth how many contradictory virtues and vices they united, and abounding in "withs" and

"withouts"all this is very easy. But to be a really great historian is perhaps the rarest of intellectual

distinctions. Many scientific works are, in their kind, absolutely perfect. There are poems which we should be

inclined to designate as faultless, or as disfigured only by blemishes which pass unnoticed in the general

blaze of excellence. There are speeches, some speeches of Demosthenes particularly, in which it would be

impossible to alter a word without altering it for the worse. But we are acquainted with no history which

approaches to our notion of what a history ought to bewith no history which does not widely depart, either

The cause may easily be assigned. This province of literature is a debatable land. It lies on the confines of

two distinct territories. It is under the jurisdiction of two hostile powers; and, like other districts similarly

situated, it is ill defined, ill cultivated, and ill regulated. Instead of being equally shared between its two

rulers, the Reason and the Imagination, it falls alternately under the sole and absolute dominion of each. It is

History, it has been said, is philosophy teaching by examples. Unhappily, what the philosophy gains in

soundness and depth the examples generally lose in vividness. A perfect historian must possess an

imagination sufficiently powerful to make his narrative affecting and picturesque. Yet he must control it so

absolutely as to content himself with the materials which he finds, and to refrain from supplying deficiencies

by additions of his own. He must be a profound and ingenious reasoner. Yet he must possess sufficient

selfcommand to abstain from casting his facts in the mould of his hypothesis. Those who can justly estimate

these almost insuperable difficulties will not think it strange that every writer should have failed, either in the

It may be laid down as a general rule, though subject to considerable qualifications and exceptions, that

history begins in novel and ends in essay. Of the romantic historians Herodotus is the earliest and the best.

His animation, his simplehearted tenderness, his wonderful talent for description and dialogue, and the pure

sweet flow of his language, place him at the head of narrators. He reminds us of a delightful child. There is a

grace beyond the reach of affectation in his awkwardness, a malice in his innocence, an intelligence in his

nonsense, an insinuating eloquence in his lisp. We know of no writer who makes such interest for himself and

his book in the heart of the reader. At the distance of threeandtwenty centuries, we feel for him the same

sort of pitying fondness which Fontaine and Gay are said to have inspired in society. He has written an

incomparable book. He has written something better perhaps than the best history; but he has not written a

good history; he is, from the first to the last chapter, an inventor. We do not here refer merely to those gross

fictions with which he has been reproached by the critics of later times. We speak of that colouring which is

equally diffused over his whole narrative, and which perpetually leaves the most sagacious reader in doubt

what to reject and what to receive. The most authentic parts of his work bear the same relation to his wildest

legends which Henry the Fifth bears to the Tempest. There was an expedition undertaken by Xerxes against

Greece; and there was an invasion of France. There was a battle at Plataea; and there was a battle at

Agincourt. Cambridge and Exeter, the Constable and the Dauphin, were persons as real as Demaratus and

Pausanias. The harangue of the Archbishop on the Salic Law and the Book of Numbers differs much less

from the orations which have in all ages proceeded from the right reverend bench than the speeches of

Mardonius and Artabanus from those which were delivered at the councilboard of Susa. Shakspeare gives

us enumerations of armies, and returns of killed and wounded, which are not, we suspect, much less accurate

than those of Herodotus. There are passages in Herodotus nearly as long as acts of Shakspeare, in which

everything is told dramatically, and in which the narrative serves only the purpose of stagedirections. It is

possible, no doubt, that the substance of some real conversations may have been reported to the historian. But

events which, if they ever happened, happened in ages and nations so remote that the particulars could never

have been known to him, are related with the greatest minuteness of detail. We have all that Candaules said to

Gyges, and all that passed between Astyages and Harpagus. We are, therefore, unable to judge whether, in

the account which he gives of transactions respecting which he might possibly have been well informed, we

can trust to anything beyond the naked outline; whether, for example, the answer of Gelon to the ambassadors

of the Grecian confederacy, or the expressions which passed between Aristides and Themistocles at their

famous interview, have been correctly transmitted to us. The great events are, no doubt, faithfully related. So,

probably, are many of the slighter circumstances; but which of them it is impossible to ascertain. The fictions

are so much like the facts, and the facts so much like the fictions, that, with respect to many most interesting

particulars, our belief is neither given nor withheld, but remains in an uneasy and interminable state of

abeyance. We know that there is truth; but we cannot exactly decide where it lies.

The faults of Herodotus are the faults of a simple and imaginative mind. Children and servants are

remarkably Herodotean in their style of narration. They tell everything dramatically. Their "says hes" and

"says shes" are proverbial. Every person who has had to settle their disputes knows that, even when they have

no intention to deceive, their reports of conversation always require to be carefully sifted. If an educated man

were giving an account of the late change of administration, he would say"Lord Goderich resigned; and

the King, in consequence, sent for the Duke of Wellington." A porter tells the story as if he had been hid

behind the curtains of the royal bed at Windsor: "So Lord Goderich says, 'I cannot manage this business; I

must go out.' So the King says,says he, 'Well, then, I must send for the Duke of Wellingtonthat's all.'"

Herodotus wrote as it was natural that he should write. He wrote for a nation susceptible, curious, lively,

insatiably desirous of novelty and excitement; for a nation in which the fine arts had attained their highest

excellence, but in which philosophy was still in its infancy. His countrymen had but recently begun to

cultivate prose composition. Public transactions had generally been recorded in verse. The first historians

might, therefore, indulge without fear of censure in the license allowed to their predecessors the bards. Books

were few. The events of former times were learned from tradition and from popular ballads; the manners of

foreign countries from the reports of travellers. It is well known that the mystery which overhangs what is

distant, either in space or time, frequently prevents us from censuring as unnatural what we perceive to be

impossible. We stare at a dragoon who has killed three French cuirassiers, as a prodigy; yet we read, without

the least disgust, how Godfrey slew his thousands, and Rinaldo his ten thousands. Within the last hundred

years, stories about China and Bantam, which ought not to have imposed on an old nurse, were gravely laid

down as foundations of political theories by eminent philosophers. What the time of the Crusades is to us, the

generation of Croesus and Solon was to the Greeks of the time of Herodotus. Babylon was to them what

For such a people was the book of Herodotus composed; and, if we may trust to a report, not sanctioned

indeed by writers of high authority, but in itself not improbable, it was composed, not to be read, but to be

heard. It was not to the slow circulation of a few copies, which the rich only could possess, that the aspiring

author looked for his reward. The great Olympian festival,the solemnity which collected multitudes, proud

of the Grecian name, from the wildest mountains of Doris, and the remotest colonies of Italy and

Libya,was to witness his triumph. The interest of the narrative, and the beauty of the style, were aided by

the imposing effect of recitation,by the splendour of the spectacle,by the powerful influence of

sympathy. A critic who could have asked for authorities in the midst of such a scene must have been of a cold

and sceptical nature; and few such critics were there. As was the historian, such were the

auditors,inquisitive, credulous, easily moved by religious awe or patriotic enthusiasm. They were the very

men to hear with delight of strange beasts, and birds, and trees,of dwarfs, and giants, and cannibalsof

gods, whose very names it was impiety to utter,of ancient dynasties, which had left behind them

monuments surpassing all the works of later times, of towns like provinces,of rivers like seas,of

stupendous walls, and temples, and pyramids,of the rites which the Magi performed at daybreak on the

tops of the mountains,of the secrets inscribed on the eternal obelisks of Memphis. With equal delight they

would have listened to the graceful romances of their own country. They now heard of the exact

accomplishment of obscure predictions, of the punishment of crimes over which the justice of heaven had

seemed to slumber,of dreams, omens, warnings from the dead,of princesses, for whom noble suitors

contended in every generous exercise of strength and skill,of infants, strangely preserved from the dagger

As the narrative approached their own times, the interest became still more absorbing. The chronicler had

now to tell the story of that great conflict from which Europe dates its intellectual and political

supremacy,a story which, even at this distance of time, is the most marvellous and the most touching in the

annals of the human race,a story abounding with all that is wild and wonderful, with all that is pathetic and

animating; with the gigantic caprices of infinite wealth and despotic powerwith the mightier miracles of

wisdom, of virtue, and of courage. He told them of rivers dried up in a day,of provinces famished for a

meal,of a passage for ships hewn through the mountains,of a road for armies spread upon the

waves,of monarchies and commonwealths swept away,of anxiety, of terror, of confusion, of

despair!and then of proud and stubborn hearts tried in that extremity of evil, and not found wanting,of

resistance long maintained against desperate odds,of lives dearly sold, when resistance could be

maintained no more,of signal deliverance, and of unsparing revenge. Whatever gave a stronger air of

reality to a narrative so well calculated to inflame the passions, and to flatter national pride, was certain to be

Between the time at which Herodotus is said to have composed his history, and the close of the

Peloponnesian war, about forty years elapsed,forty years, crowded with great military and political events.

The circumstances of that period produced a great effect on the Grecian character; and nowhere was this

effect so remarkable as in the illustrious democracy of Athens. An Athenian, indeed, even in the time of

Herodotus, would scarcely have written a book so romantic and garrulous as that of Herodotus. As

civilisation advanced, the citizens of that famous republic became still less visionary, and still less simple

hearted. They aspired to know where their ancestors had been content to doubt; they began to doubt where

their ancestors had thought it their duty to believe. Aristophanes is fond of alluding to this change in the

temper of his countrymen. The father and son, in the Clouds, are evidently representatives of the generations

to which they respectively belonged. Nothing more clearly illustrates the nature of this moral revolution than

the change which passed upon tragedy. The wild sublimity of Aeschylus became the scoff of every young

Phidippides. Lectures on abstruse points of philosophy, the fine distinctions of casuistry, and the dazzling

fence of rhetoric, were substituted for poetry. The language lost something of that infantine sweetness which

had characterised it. It became less like the ancient Tuscan, and more like the modern French.

The fashionable logic of the Greeks was, indeed, far from strict. Logic never can be strict where books are

scarce, and where information is conveyed orally. We are all aware how frequently fallacies, which, when set

down on paper, are at once detected, pass for unanswerable arguments when dexterously and volubly urged

in Parliament, at the bar, or in private conversation. The reason is evident. We cannot inspect them closely

enough to perceive their inaccuracy. We cannot readily compare them with each other. We lose sight of one

part of the subject before another, which ought to be received in connection with it, comes before us; and as

there is no immutable record of what has been admitted and of what has been denied, direct contradictions

pass muster with little difficulty. Almost all the education of a Greek consisted in talking and listening. His

opinions on government were picked up in the debates of the assembly. If he wished to study metaphysics,

instead of shutting himself up with a book, he walked down to the marketplace to look for a sophist. So

completely were men formed to these habits, that even writing acquired a conversational air. The

philosophers adopted the form of dialogue, as the most natural mode of communicating knowledge. Their

reasonings have the merits and the defects which belong to that species of composition, and are characterised

rather by quickness and subtilty than by depth and precision. Truth is exhibited in parts, and by glimpses.

Innumerable clever hints are given; but no sound and durable system is erected. The argumentum ad

hominem, a kind of argument most efficacious in debate, but utterly useless for the investigation of general

principles, is among their favourite resources. Hence, though nothing can be more admirable than the skill

which Socrates displays in the conversations which Plato has reported or invented, his victories, for the most

part, seem to us unprofitable. A trophy is set up; but no new province is added to the dominions of the human

Still, where thousands of keen and ready intellects were constantly employed in speculating on the qualiies of

actions and on the principles of government, it was impossible that history should retain its whole character.

It became less gossiping and less picturesque; but much more accurate, and somewhat more scientific.

The history of Thucydides differs from that of Herodotus as a portrait differs from the representation of an

imaginary scene; as the Burke or Fox of Reynolds differs from his Ugolino or his Beaufort. In the former

case, the archetype is given: in the latter it is created. The faculties which are required for the latter purpose

are of a higher and rarer order than those which suffice for the former, and indeed necessarily comprise them.

He who is able to paint what he sees with the eye of the mind will surely be able to paint what he sees with

the eye of the body. He who can invent a story, and tell it well, will also be able to tell, in an interesting

manner, a story which he has not invented. If, in practice, some of the best writers of fiction have been among

the worst writers of history, it has been because one of their talents had merged in another so completely that

it could not be severed; because, having long been habituated to invent and narrate at the same time, they

Some capricious and discontented artists have affected to consider portraitpainting as unworthy of a man of

genius. Some critics have spoken in the same contemptuous manner of history. Johnson puts the case thus:

The historian tells either what is false or what is true: in the former case he is no historian: in the latter he has

no opportunity for displaying his abilities: for truth is one: and all who tell the truth must tell it alike.

It is not difficult to elude both the horns of this dilemma. We will recur to the analogous art of

portraitpainting. Any man with eyes and hands may be taught to take a likeness. The process, up to a certain

point, is merely mechanical. If this were all, a man of talents might justly despise the occupation. But we

could mention portraits which are resemblances,but not mere resemblances; faithful,but much more

than faithful; portraits which condense into one point of time, and exhibit, at a single glance, the whole

history of turbid and eventful lives in which the eye seems to scrutinise us, and the mouth to command

usin which the brow menaces, and the lip almost quivers with scornin which every wrinkle is a

comment on some important transaction. The account which Thucydides has given of the retreat from

Syracuse is, among narratives, what Vandyke's Lord Strafford is among paintings.

Diversity, it is said, implies error: truth is one, and admits of no degrees. We answer, that this principle holds

good only in abstract reasonings. When we talk of the truth of imitation in the fine arts, we mean an imperfect

and a graduated truth. No picture is exactly like the original; nor is a picture good in proportion as it is like

the original. When Sir Thomas Lawrence paints a handsome peeress, he does not contemplate her through a

powerful microscope, and transfer to the canvas the pores of the skin, the bloodvessels of the eye, and all

the other beauties which Gulliver discovered in the Brobdingnagian maids of honour. If he were to do this,

the effect would not merely be unpleasant, but, unless the scale of the picture were proportionably enlarged,

would be absolutely FALSE. And, after all, a microscope of greater power than that which he had employed

would convict him of innumerable omissions. The same may be said of history. Perfectly and absolutely true

it cannot be: for, to be perfectly and absolutely true, it ought to record ALL the slightest particulars of the

slightest transactionsall the things done and all the words uttered during the time of which it treats. The

omission of any circumstance, however insignificant, would be a defect. If history were written thus, the

Bodleian Library would not contain the occurrences of a week. What is told in the fullest and most accurate

annals bears an infinitely small proportion to what is suppressed. The difference between the copious work of

Clarendon and the account of the civil wars in the abridgment of Goldsmith vanishes when compared with

No picture, then, and no history, can present us with the whole truth: but those are the best pictures and the

best histories which exhibit such parts of the truth as most nearly produce the effect of the whole. He who is

deficient in the art of selection may, by showing nothing but the truth, produce all the effect of the grossest

falsehood. It perpetually happens that one writer tells less truth than another, merely because he tells more

truths. In the imitative arts we constantly see this. There are lines in the human face, and objects in landscape,

which stand in such relations to each other, that they ought either to be all introduced into a painting together

or all omitted together. A sketch into which none of them enters may be excellent; but, if some are given and

others left out, though there are more points of likeness, there is less likeness. An outline scrawled with a pen,

which seizes the marked features of a countenance, will give a much stronger idea of it than a bad painting in

oils. Yet the worst painting in oils that ever hung at Somerset House resembles the original in many more

particulars. A bust of white marble may give an excellent idea of a blooming face. Colour the lips and cheeks

of the bust, leaving the hair and eyes unaltered, and the similarity, instead of being more striking, will be less

History has its foreground and its background: and it is principally in the management of its perspective that

one artist differs from another. Some events must be represented on a large scale, others diminished; the great

majority will be lost in the dimness of the horizon; and a general idea of their joint effect will be given by a

In this respect no writer has ever equalled Thucydides. He was a perfect master of the art of gradual

diminution. His history is sometimes as concise as a chronological chart; yet it is always perspicuous. It is

sometimes as minute as one of Lovelace's letters; yet it is never prolix. He never fails to contract and to

Thucydides borrowed from Herodotus the practice of putting speeches of his own into the mouths of his

characters. In Herodotus this usage is scarcely censurable. It is of a piece with his whole manner. But it is

altogether incongruous in the work of his successor, and violates, not only the accuracy of history, but the

decencies of fiction. When once we enter into the spirit of Herodotus, we find no inconsistency. The

conventional probability of his drama is preserved from the beginning to the end. The deliberate orations, and

the familiar dialogues, are in strict keeping with each other. But the speeches of Thucydides are neither

preceded nor followed by anything with which they harmonise. They give to the whole book something of

the grotesque character of those Chinese pleasure grounds in which perpendicular rocks of granite start up

in the midst of a soft green plain. Invention is shocking where truth is in such close juxtaposition with it.

Thucydides honestly tells us that some of these discourses are purely fictitious. He may have reported the

substance of others correctly, but it is clear from the internal evidence that he has preserved no more than the

substance. His own peculiar habits of thought and expression are everywhere discernible. Individual and

national peculiarities are seldom to be traced in the sentiments, and never in the diction. The oratory of the

Corinthians and Thebans is not less Attic, either in matter or in manner, than that of the Athenians. The style

of Cleon is as pure, as austere, as terse, and as significant, as that of Pericles.

In spite of this great fault, it must be allowed that Thucydides has surpassed all his rivals in the art of

historical narration, in the art of producing an effect on the imagination, by skilful selection and disposition,

without indulging in the license of invention. But narration, though an important part of the business of a

historian, is not the whole. To append a moral to a work of fiction is either useless or superfluous. A fiction

may give a more impressive effect to what is already known; but it can teach nothing new. If it presents to us

characters and trains of events to which our experience furnishes us with nothing similar, instead of deriving

instruction from it, we pronounce it unnatural. We do not form our opinions from it; but we try it by our

preconceived opinions. Fiction, therefore, is essentially imitative. Its merit consists in its resemblance to a

model with which we are already familiar, or to which at least we can instantly refer. Hence it is that the

anecdotes which interest us most strongly in authentic narrative are offensive when introduced into novels;

that what is called the romantic part of history is in fact the least romantic. It is delightful as history, because

it contradicts our previous notions of human nature, and of the connection of causes and effects. It is, on that

very account, shocking and incongruous in fiction. In fiction, the principles are given, to find the facts: in

history, the facts are given, to find the principles; and the writer who does not explain the phenomena as well

as state them, performs only one half of his office. Facts are the mere dross of history. It is from the abstract

truth which interpenetrates them, and lies latent among them like gold in the ore, that the mass derives its

whole value: and the precious particles are generally combined with the baser in such a manner that the

Here Thucydides is deficient: the deficiency, indeed, is not discreditable to him. It was the inevitable effect of

circumstances. It was in the nature of things necessary that, in some part of its progress through political

science, the human mind should reach that point which it attained in his time. Knowledge advances by steps,

and not by leaps. The axioms of an English debating club would have been startling and mysterious

paradoxes to the most enlightened statesmen of Athens. But it would be as absurd to speak contemptuously of

the Athenian on this account as to ridicule Strabo for not having given us an account of Chili, or to talk of

Ptolemy as we talk of Sir Richard Phillips. Still, when we wish for solid geographical information, we must

prefer the solemn coxcombry of Pinkerton to the noble work of Strabo. If we wanted instruction respecting

the solar system, we should consult the silliest girl from a boardingschool, rather than Ptolemy.

Thucydides was undoubtedly a sagacious and reflecting man. This clearly appears from the ability with

which he discusses practical questions. But the talent of deciding on the circumstances of a particular case is

often possessed in the highest perfection by persons destitute of the power of generalisation. Men skilled in

the military tactics of civilised nations have been amazed at the farsightedness and penetration which a

Mohawk displays in concerting his stratagems, or in discerning those of his enemies. In England, no class

possesses so much of that peculiar ability which is required for constructing ingenious schemes, and for

obviating remote difficulties, as the thieves and the thieftakers. Women have more of this dexterity than

men. Lawyers have more of it than statesmen: statesmen have more of it than philosophers. Monk had more

of it than Harrington and all his club. Walpole had more of it than Adam Smith or Beccaria. Indeed, the

species of discipline by which this dexterity is acquired tends to contract the mind, and to render it incapable

The Grecian statesmen of the age of Thucydides were distinguished by their practical sagacity, their insight

into motives, their skill in devising means for the attainment of their ends. A state of society in which the rich

were constantly planning the oppression of the poor, and the poor the spoliation of the rich, in which the ties

of party had superseded those of country, in which revolutions and counterrevolutions were events of daily

occurrence, was naturally prolific in desperate and crafty political adventurers. This was the very school in

which men were likely to acquire the dissimulation of Mazarin, the judicious temerity of Richelieu, the

penetration, the exquisite tact, the almost instinctive presentiment of approaching events which gave so much

authority to the counsel of Shaftesbury, that "it was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of God." In this

school Thucydides studied; and his wisdom is that which such a school would naturally afford. He judges

better of circumstances than of principles. The more a question is narrowed, the better he reasons upon it. His

work suggests many most important considerations respecting the first principles of government and morals,

the growth of factions, the organisation of armies, and the mutual relations of communities. Yet all his

general observations on these subjects are very superficial. His most judicious remarks differ from the

remarks of a really philosophical historian, as a sum correctly cast up by a bookkeeper from a general

expression discovered by an algebraist. The former is useful only in a single transaction; the latter may be

This opinion will, we fear, be considered as heterodox. For, not to speak of the illusion which the sight of a

Greek type, or the sound of a Greek diphthong, often produces, there are some peculiarities in the manner of

Thucydides which in no small degree have tended to secure to him the reputation of profundity. His book is

evidently the book of a man and a statesman; and in this respect presents a remarkable contrast to the

delightful childishness of Herodotus. Throughout it there is an air of matured power, of grave and melancholy

reflection, of impartiality and habitual selfcommand. His feelings are rarely indulged, and speedily

repressed. Vulgar prejudices of every kind, and particularly vulgar superstitions, he treats with a cold and

sober disdain peculiar to himself. His style is weighty, condensed, antithetical, and not unfrequently obscure.

But, when we look at his political philosophy, without regard to these circumstances, we find him to have

been, what indeed it would have been a miracle if he had not been, simply an Athenian of the fifth century

Xenophon is commonly placed, but we think without much reason, in the same rank with Herodotus and

Thucydides. He resembles them, indeed, in the purity and sweetness of his style; but in spirit, he rather

resembles that later school of historians whose works seem to be fables composed for a moral, and who, in

their eagerness to give us warnings and examples, forget to give us men and women. The Life of Cyrus,

whether we look upon it as a history or as a romance, seems to us a very wretched performance. The

Expedition of the Ten Thousand, and the History of Grecian Affairs, are certainly pleasant reading; but they

indicate no great power of mind. In truth, Xenophon, though his taste was elegant, his disposition amiable,

and his intercourse with the world extensive, had, we suspect, rather a weak head. Such was evidently the

opinion of that extraordinary man to whom he early attached himself, and for whose memory he entertained

an idolatrous veneration. He came in only for the milk with which Socrates nourished his babes in

philosophy. A few saws of morality, and a few of the simplest doctrines of natural religion, were enough for

the good young man. The strong meat, the bold speculations on physical and metaphysical science, were

reserved for auditors of a different description. Even the lawless habits of a captain of mercenary troops could

not change the tendency which the character of Xenophon early acquired. To the last, he seems to have

retained a sort of heathen Puritanism. The sentiments of piety and virtue which abound in his works are those

of a wellmeaning man, somewhat timid and narrowminded, devout from constitution rather than from

rational conviction. He was as superstitious as Herodotus, but in a way far more offensive. The very

peculiarities which charm us in an infant, the toothless mumbling, the stammering, the tottering, the

helplessness, the causeless tears and laughter, are disgusting in old age. In the same manner, the absurdity

which precedes a period of general intelligence is often pleasing; that which follows it is contemptible. The

nonsense of Herodotus is that of a baby. The nonsense of Xenophon is that of a dotard. His stories about

dreams, omens, and prophecies, present a strange contrast to the passages in which the shrewd and

incredulous Thucydides mentions the popular superstitions. It is not quite clear that Xenophon was honest in

his credulity; his fanaticism was in some degree politic. He would have made an excellent member of the

Apostolic Camarilla. An alarmist by nature, an aristocrat by party, he carried to an unreasonable excess his

horror of popular turbulence. The quiet atrocity of Sparta did not shock him in the same manner; for he hated

tumult more than crimes. He was desirous to find restraints which might curb the passions of the multitude;

and he absurdly fancied that he had found them in a religion without evidences or sanction, precepts or

Polybius and Arrian have given us authentic accounts of facts; and here their merit ends. They were not men

of comprehensive minds; they had not the art of telling a story in an interesting manner. They have in

consequence been thrown into the shade by writers who, though less studious of truth than themselves,

Yet Polybius and Arrian deserve high praise when compared with the writers of that school of which Plutarch

may be considered as the head. For the historians of this class we must confess that we entertain a peculiar

aversion. They seem to have been pedants, who, though destitute of those valuable qualities which are

frequently found in conjunction with pedantry, thought themselves great philosophers and great politicians.

They not only mislead their readers in every page, as to particular facts, but they appear to have altogether

misconceived the whole character of the times of which they write. They were inhabitants of an empire

bounded by the Atlantic Ocean and the Euphrates, by the ice of Scythia and the sands of Mauritania;

composed of nations whose manners, whose languages, whose religion, whose countenances and

complexions, were widely different; governed by one mighty despotism, which had risen on the ruins of a

thousand commonwealths and kingdoms. Of liberty, such as it is in small democracies, of patriotism, such as

it is in small independent communities of any kind, they had, and they could have, no experimental

knowledge. But they had read of men who exerted themselves in the cause of their country with an energy

unknown in later times, who had violated the dearest of domestic charities, or voluntarily devoted themselves

to death for the public good; and they wondered at the degeneracy of their contemporaries. It never occurred

to them that the feelings which they so greatly admired sprung from local and occasional causes; that they

will always grow up spontaneously in small societies; and that, in large empires, though they may be forced

into existence for a short time by peculiar circumstances, they cannot be general or permanent. It is

impossible that any man should feel for a fortress on a remote frontier as he feels for his own house; that he

should grieve for a defeat in which ten thousand people whom he never saw have fallen as he grieves for a

defeat which has half unpeopled the street in which he lives; that he should leave his home for a military

expedition in order to preserve the balance of power, as cheerfully as he would leave it to repel invaders who

The writers of whom we speak should have considered this. They should have considered that in patriotism,

such as it existed amongst the Greeks, there was nothing essentially and eternally good; that an exclusive

attachment to a particular society, though a natural, and, under certain restrictions, a most useful sentiment,

implies no extraordinary attainments in wisdom or virtue; that, where it has existed in an intense degree, it

has turned states into gangs of robbers whom their mutual fidelity has rendered more dangerous, has given a

character of peculiar atrocity to war, and has generated that worst of all political evils, the tyranny of nations

Enthusiastically attached to the name of liberty, these historians troubled themselves little about its definition.

The Spartans, tormented by ten thousand absurd restraints, unable to please themselves in the choice of their

wives, their suppers, or their company, compelled to assume a peculiar manner, and to talk in a peculiar style,

gloried in their liberty. The aristocracy of Rome repeatedly made liberty a plea for cutting off the favourites

of the people. In almost all the little commonwealths of antiquity, liberty was used as a pretext for measures

directed against everything which makes liberty valuable, for measures which stifled discussion, corrupted

the administration of justice, and discouraged the accumulation of property. The writers, whose works we are

considering, confounded the sound with the substance, and the means with the end. Their imaginations were

inflamed by mystery. They conceived of liberty as monks conceive of love, as cockneys conceive of the

happiness and innocence of rural life, as novelreading sempstresses conceive of Almack's and Grosvenor

Square, accomplished Marquesses and handsome Colonels of the Guards. In the relation of events, and the

delineation of characters, they have paid little attention to facts, to the costume of the times of which they

pretend to treat, or to the general principles of human nature. They have been faithful only to their own

puerile and extravagant doctrines. Generals and statesmen are metamorphosed into magnanimous coxcombs,

from whose fulsome virtues we turn away with disgust. The fine sayings and exploits of their heroes remind

us of the insufferable perfections of Sir Charles Grandison, and affect us with a nausea similar to that which

we feel when an actor, in one of Morton's or Kotzebue's plays, lays his hand on his heart, advances to the

These writers, men who knew not what it was to have a country, men who had never enjoyed political rights,

brought into fashion an offensive cant about patriotism and zeal for freedom. What the English Puritans did

for the language of Christianity, what Scuderi did for the language of love, they did for the language of public

spirit. By habitual exaggeration they made it mean. By monotonous emphasis they made it feeble. They

Their ordinary rules of morality are deduced from extreme cases. The common regimen which they prescribe

for society is made up of those desperate remedies which only its most desperate distempers require. They

look with peculiar complacency on actions which even those who approve them consider as exceptions to

laws of almost universal applicationwhich bear so close an affinity to the most atrocious crimes that, even

where it may be unjust to censure them, it is unsafe to praise them. It is not strange, therefore, that some

flagitious instances of perfidy and cruelty should have been passed unchallenged in such company, that grave

moralists, with no personal interest at stake, should have extolled, in the highest terms, deeds of which the

atrocity appalled even the infuriated factions in whose cause they were perpetrated. The part which Timoleon

took in the assassination of his brother shocked many of his own partisans. The recollection of it preyed long

on his own mind. But it was reserved for historians who lived some centuries later to discover that his

conduct was a glorious display of virtue, and to lament that, from the frailty of human nature, a man who

The writings of these men, and of their modern imitators, have produced effects which deserve some notice.

The English have been so long accustomed to political speculation, and have enjoyed so large a measure of

practical liberty, that such works have produced little effect on their minds. We have classical associations

and great names of our own which we can confidently oppose to the most splendid of ancient times. Senate

has not to our ears a sound so venerable as Parliament. We respect to the Great Charter more than the laws of

Solon. The Capitol and the Forum impress us with less awe than our own Westminster Hall and Westminster

Abbey, the place where the great men of twenty generations have contended, the place where they sleep

together! The list of warriors and statesmen by whom our constitution was founded or preserved, from De

Montfort down to Fox, may well stand a comparison with the Fasti of Rome. The dying thanksgiving of

Sidney is as noble as the libation which Thrasea poured to Liberating Jove: and we think with far less

pleasure of Cato tearing out his entrails than of Russell saying, as he turned away from his wife, that the

bitterness of death was past. Even those parts of our history over which, on some accounts, we would gladly

throw a veil may be proudly opposed to those on which the moralists of antiquity loved most to dwell. The

enemy of English liberty was not murdered by men whom he had pardoned and loaded with benefits. He was

not stabbed in the back by those who smiled and cringed before his face. He was vanquished on fields of

stricken battle; he was arraigned, sentenced, and executed in the face of heaven and earth. Our liberty is

neither Greek nor Roman; but essentially English. It has a character of its own,a character which has taken

a tinge from the sentiments of the chivalrous ages, and which accords with the peculiarities of our manners

and of our insular situation. It has a language, too, of its own, and a language singularly idiomatic, full of

Here, therefore, the effect of books such as those which we have been considering has been harmless. They

have, indeed, given currency to many very erroneous opinions with respect to ancient history. They have

heated the imaginations of boys. They have misled the judgment and corrupted the taste of some men of

letters, such as Akenside and Sir William Jones. But on persons engaged in public affairs they have had very

little influence. The foundations of our constitution were laid by men who knew nothing of the Greeks but

that they denied the orthodox procession and cheated the Crusaders; and nothing of Rome, but that the Pope

lived there. Those who followed, contented themselves with improving on the original plan. They found

models at home and therefore they did not look for them abroad. But, when enlightened men on the Continent

began to think about political reformation, having no patterns before their eyes in their domestic history, they

naturally had recourse to those remains of antiquity, the study of which is considered throughout Europe as

an important part of education. The historians of whom we have been speaking had been members of large

communities, and subjects of absolute sovereigns. Hence it is, as we have already said, that they commit such

gross errors in speaking of the little republics of antiquity. Their works were now read in the spirit in which

they had been written. They were read by men placed in circumstances closely resembling their own,

unacquainted with the real nature of liberty, but inclined to believe everything good which could be told

respecting it. How powerfully these books impressed these speculative reformers, is well known to all who

have paid any attention to the French literature of the last century. But, perhaps, the writer on whom they

produced the greatest effect was Vittorio Alfieri. In some of his plays, particularly in Virginia, Timoleon, and

It was not strange that the blind, thus led by the blind, should stumble. The transactions of the French

Revolution, in some measure, took their character from these works. Without the assistance of these works,

indeed, a revolution would have taken place,a revolution productive of much good and much evil,

tremendous but shortlived, evil dearly purchased, but durable good. But it would not have been exactly such a

revolution. The style, the accessories, would have been in many respects different. There would have been

less of bombast in language, less of affectation in manner, less of solemn trifling and ostentatious simplicity.

The acts of legislative assemblies, and the correspondence of diplomatists, would not have been disgraced by

rants worthy only of a college declamation. The government of a great and polished nation would not have

rendered itself ridiculous by attempting to revive the usages of a world which had long passed away, or rather

of a world which had never existed except in the description of a fantastic school of writers. These

secondhand imitations resembled the originals about as much as the classical feast with which the Doctor in

Peregrine Pickle turned the stomachs of all his guests resembled one of the suppers of Lucullus in the Hall of

These were mere follies. But the spirit excited by these writers produced more serious effects. The greater

part of the crimes which disgraced the revolution sprung indeed from the relaxation of law, from popular

ignorance, from the remembrance of past oppression, from the fear of foreign conquest, from rapacity, from

ambition, from partyspirit. But many atrocious proceedings must, doubtless, be ascribed to heated

imagination, to perverted principle, to a distaste for what was vulgar in morals, and a passion for what was

startling and dubious. Mr Burke has touched on this subject with great felicity of expression: "The gradation

of their republic," says he, "is laid in moral paradoxes. All those instances to be found in history, whether real

or fabulous, of a doubtful public spirit, at which morality is perplexed, reason is staggered, and from which

affrighted nature recoils, are their chosen and almost sole examples for the instruction of their youth." This

evil, we believe, is to be directly ascribed to the influence of the historians whom we have mentioned, and

Livy had some faults in common with these writers. But on the whole he must be considered as forming a

class by himself: no historian with whom we are acquainted has shown so complete an indifference to truth.

He seems to have cared only about the picturesque effect of his book, and the honour of his country. On the

other hand, we do not know, in the whole range of literature, an instance of a bad thing so well done. The

painting of the narrative is beyond description vivid and graceful. The abundance of interesting sentiments

and splendid imagery in the speeches is almost miraculous. His mind is a soil which is never overteemed, a

fountain which never seems to trickle. It pours forth profusely; yet it gives no sign of exhaustion. It was

probably to this exuberance of thought and language, always fresh, always sweet, always pure, no sooner

yielded than repaired, that the critics applied that expression which has been so much discussed lactea

All the merits and all the defects of Livy take a colouring from the character of his nation. He was a writer

peculiarly Roman; the proud citizen of a commonwealth which had indeed lost the reality of liberty, but

which still sacredly preserved its forms in fact, the subject of an arbitrary prince, but in his own estimation

one of the masters of the world, with a hundred kings below him, and only the gods above him. He, therefore,

looked back on former times with feelings far different from those which were naturally entertained by his

Greek contemporaries, and which at a later period became general among men of letters throughout the

Roman Empire. He contemplated the past with interest and delight, not because it furnished a contrast to the

present, but because it had led to the present. He recurred to it, not to lose in proud recollections the sense of

national degradation, but to trace the progress of national glory. It is true that his veneration for antiquity

produced on him some of the effects which it produced on those who arrived at it by a very different road. He

has something of their exaggeration, something of their cant, something of their fondness for anomalies and

lusus naturae in morality. Yet even here we perceive a difference. They talk rapturously of patriotism and

liberty in the abstract. He does not seem to think any country but Rome deserving of love; nor is it for liberty

as liberty, but for liberty as a part of the Roman institutions, that he is zealous.

Of the concise and elegant accounts of the campaigns of Caesar little can be said. They are incomparable

models for military despatches. But histories they are not, and do not pretend to be.

The ancient critics placed Sallust in the same rank with Livy; and unquestionably the small portion of his

works which has come down to us is calculated to give a high opinion of his talents. But his style is not very

pleasant: and his most powerful work, the account of the Conspiracy of Catiline, has rather the air of a clever

party pamphlet than that of a history. It abounds with strange inconsistencies, which, unexplained as they are,

necessarily excite doubts as to the fairness of the narrative. It is true, that many circumstances now forgotten

may have been familiar to his contemporaries, and may have rendered passages clear to them which to us

appear dubious and perplexing. But a great historian should remember that he writes for distant generations,

for men who will perceive the apparent contradictions, and will possess no means of reconciling them. We

can only vindicate the fidelity of Sallust at the expense of his skill. But in fact all the information which we

have from contemporaries respecting this famous plot is liable to the same objection, and is read by

discerning men with the same incredulity. It is all on one side. No answer has reached our times. Yet on the

showing of the accusers the accused seem entitled to acquittal. Catiline, we are told, intrigued with a Vestal

virgin, and murdered his own son. His house was a den of gamblers and debauchees. No young man could

cross his threshold without danger to his fortune and reputation. Yet this is the man with whom Cicero was

willing to coalesce in a contest for the first magistracy of the republic; and whom he described, long after the

fatal termination of the conspiracy, as an accomplished hypocrite, by whom he had himself been deceived,

and who had acted with consummate skill the character of a good citizen and a good friend. We are told that

the plot was the most wicked and desperate ever known, and, almost in the same breath, that the great body of

the people, and many of the nobles, favoured it; that the richest citizens of Rome were eager for the spoliation

of all property, and its highest functionaries for the destruction of all order; that Crassus, Caesar, the Praetor

Lentulus, one of the consuls of the year, one of the consuls elect, were proved or suspected to be engaged in a

scheme for subverting institutions to which they owed the highest honours, and introducing universal

anarchy. We are told that a government, which knew all this, suffered the conspirator, whose rank, talents,

and courage rendered him most dangerous, to quit Rome without molestation. We are told that bondmen and

gladiators were to be armed against the citizens. Yet we find that Catiline rejected the slaves who crowded to

enlist in his army, lest, as Sallust himself expresses it, "he should seem to identify their cause with that of the

citizens." Finally, we are told that the magistrate, who was universally allowed to have saved all classes of his

countrymen from conflagration and massacre, rendered himself so unpopular by his conduct that a marked

insult was offered to him at the expiration of his office, and a severe punishment inflicted on him shortly

Sallust tells us, what, indeed, the letters and speeches of Cicero sufficiently prove, that some persons consider

the shocking, and atrocious parts of the plot as mere inventions of the government, designed to excuse its

unconstitutional measures. We must confess ourselves to be of that opinion. There was, undoubtedly, a strong

party desirous to change the administration. While Pompey held the command of an army, they could not

effect their purpose without preparing means for repelling force, if necessary, by force. In all this there is

nothing different from the ordinary practice of Roman factions. The other charges brought against the

conspirators are so inconsistent and improbable, that we give no credit whatever to them. If our readers think

this scepticism unreasonable, let them turn to the contemporary accounts of the Popish plot. Let them look

over the votes of Parliament, and the speeches of the king; the charges of Scroggs, and the harangues of the

managers employed against Strafford. A person who should form his judgment from these pieces alone

would believe that London was set on fire by the Papists, and that Sir Edmondbury Godfrey was murdered

for his religion. Yet these stories are now altogether exploded. They have been abandoned by statesmen to

aldermen, by aldermen to clergymen, by clergymen to old women, and by old women to Sir Harcourt Lees.

Of the Latin historians, Tacitus was certainly the greatest. His style, indeed, is not only faulty in itself, but is,

in some respects, peculiarly unfit for historical composition. He carries his love of effect far beyond the limits

of moderation. He tells a fine story finely, but he cannot tell a plain story plainly. He stimulates till stimulants

lose their power. Thucydides, as we have already observed, relates ordinary transactions with the

unpretending clearness and succinctness of a gazette. His great powers of painting he reserves for events of

which the slightest details are interesting. The simplicity of the setting gives additional lustre to the brilliants.

There are passages in the narrative of Tacitus superior to the best which can be quoted from Thucydides. But

they are not enchased and relieved with the same skill. They are far more striking when extracted from the

body of the work to which they belong than when they occur in their place, and are read in connection with

In the delineation of character, Tacitus is unrivalled among historians, and has very few superiors among

dramatists and novelists. By the delineation of character, we do not mean the practice of drawing up

epigrammatic catalogues of good and bad qualities, and appending them to the names of eminent men. No

writer, indeed, has done this more skilfully than Tacitus; but this is not his peculiar glory. All the persons

who occupy a large space in his works have an individuality of character which seems to pervade all their

words and actions. We know them as if we had lived with them. Claudius, Nero, Otho, both the Agrippinas,

are masterpieces. But Tiberius is a still higher miracle of art. The historian undertook to make us intimately

acquainted with a man singularly dark and inscrutable,with a man whose real disposition long remained

swathed up in intricate folds of factitious virtues, and over whose actions the hypocrisy of his youth, and the

seclusion of his old age, threw a singular mystery. He was to exhibit the specious qualities of the tyrant in a

light which might render them transparent, and enable us at once to perceive the covering and the vices which

it concealed. He was to trace the gradations by which the first magistrate of a republic, a senator mingling

freely in debate, a noble associating with his brother nobles, was transformed into an Asiatic sultan; he was to

exhibit a character, distinguished by courage, selfcommand, and profound policy, yet defiled by all

He was to mark the gradual effect of advancing age and approaching death on this strange compound of

strength and weakness; to exhibit the old sovereign of the world sinking into a dotage which, though it

rendered his appetites eccentric, and his temper savage, never impaired the powers of his stern and

penetrating mindconscious of failing strength, raging with capricious sensuality, yet to the last the keenest

of observers, the most artful of dissemblers, and the most terrible of masters. The task was one of extreme

The talent which is required to write history thus bears a considerable affinity to the talent of a great

dramatist. There is one obvious distinction. The dramatist creates; the historian only disposes. The difference

is not in the mode of execution, but in the mode of conception. Shakspeare is guided by a model which exists

in his imagination; Tacitus, by a model furnished from without. Hamlet is to Tiberius what the Laocoon is to

In this part of his art Tacitus certainly had neither equal nor second among the ancient historians. Herodotus,

though he wrote in a dramatic form, had little of dramatic genius. The frequent dialogues which he introduces

give vivacity and movement to the narrative, but are not strikingly characteristic. Xenophon is fond of telling

his readers, at considerable length, what he thought of the persons whose adventures he relates. But he does

not show them the men, and enable them to judge for themselves. The heroes of Livy are the most insipid of

all beings, real or imaginary, the heroes of Plutarch always excepted. Indeed, the manner of Plutarch in this

respect reminds us of the cookery of those continental inns, the horror of English travellers, in which a certain

nondescript broth is kept constantly boiling, and copiously poured, without distinction, over every dish as it

comes up to table. Thucydides, though at a wide interval, comes next to Tacitus. His Pericles, his Nicias, his

Cleon, his Brasidas, are happily discriminated. The lines are few, the colouring faint: but the general air and

We begin, like the priest in Don Quixote's library, to be tired with taking down books one after another for

separate judgment, and feel inclined to pass sentence on them in masses. We shall therefore, instead of

pointing out the defects and merits of the different modern historians, state generally in what particulars they

They have certainly been, in one sense, far more strict in their adherence to truth than most of the Greek and

Roman writers. They do not think themselves entitled to render their narrative interesting by introducing

descriptions, conversations, and harangues which have no existence but in their own imagination. This

improvement was gradually introduced. History commenced among the modern nations of Europe, as it had

commenced among the Greeks, in romance. Froissart was our Herodotus. Italy was to Europe what Athens

was to Greece. In Italy, therefore, a more accurate and manly mode of narration was early introduced.

Machiavelli and Guicciardini, in imitation of Livy and Thucydides, composed speeches for their historical

personages. But, as the classical enthusiasm which distinguished the age of Lorenzo and Leo gradually

subsided, this absurd practice was abandoned. In France, we fear, it still, in some degree, keeps its ground. In

our own country, a writer who should venture on it would be laughed to scorn. Whether the historians of the

last two centuries tell more truth than those of antiquity, may perhaps be doubted. But it is quite certain that

In the philosophy of history, the moderns have very far surpassed the ancients. It is not, indeed, strange that

the Greeks and Romans should not have carried the science of government, or any other experimental

science, so far as it has been carried in our time; for the experimental sciences are generally in a state of

progression. They were better understood in the seventeenth century than in the sixteenth, and in the

eighteenth century than in the seventeenth. But this constant improvement, this natural growth of knowledge,

will not altogether account for the immense superiority of the modern writers. The difference is a difference

not in degree, but of kind. It is not merely that new principles have been discovered, but that new faculties

seem to be exerted. It is not that at one time the human intellect should have made but small progress, and at

another time have advanced far: but that at one time it should have been stationary, and at another time

constantly proceeding. In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the

magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals. They reasoned as justly as ourselves on

subjects which required pure demonstration. But in the moral sciences they made scarcely any advance.

During the long period which elapsed between the fifth century before the Christian era and the fifth century

after it little perceptible progress was made. All the metaphysical discoveries of all the philosophers, from the

time of Socrates to the northern invasion, are not to be compared in importance with those which have been

made in England every fifty years since the time of Elizabeth. There is not the least reason to believe that the

principles of government, legislation, and political economy, were better understood in the time of Augustus

Caesar than in the time of Pericles. In our own country, the sound doctrines of trade and jurisprudence have

been, within the lifetime of a single generation, dimly hinted, boldly propounded, defended, systematised,

adopted by all reflecting men of all parties, quoted in legislative assemblies, incorporated into laws and

To what is this change to be attributed? Partly, no doubt, to the discovery of printing, a discovery which has

not only diffused knowledge widely, but, as we have already observed, has also introduced into reasoning a

precision unknown in those ancient communities, in which information, was, for the most part, conveyed

orally. There was, we suspect, another cause, less obvious, but still more powerful.

The spirit of the two most famous nations of antiquity was remarkably exclusive. In the time of Homer the

Greeks had not begun to consider themselves as a distinct race. They still looked with something of childish

wonder and awe on the riches and wisdom of Sidon and Egypt. From what causes, and by what gradations,

their feelings underwent a change, it is not easy to determine. Their history, from the Trojan to the Persian

war, is covered with an obscurity broken only by dim and scattered gleams of truth. But it is certain that a

great alteration took place. They regarded themselves as a separate people. They had common religious rites,

and common principles of public law, in which foreigners had no part. In all their political systems,

monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical, there was a strong family likeness. After the retreat of Xerxes

and the fall of Mardonius, national pride rendered the separation between the Greeks and the barbarians

complete. The conquerors considered themselves men of a superior breed, men who, in their intercourse with

neighbouring nations, were to teach, and not to learn. They looked for nothing out of themselves. They

borrowed nothing. They translated nothing. We cannot call to mind a single expression of any Greek writer

earlier than the age of Augustus, indicating an opinion that anything worth reading could be written in any

language except his own. The feelings which sprung from national glory were not altogether extinguished by

national degradation. They were fondly cherished through ages of slavery and shame. The literature of Rome

herself was regarded with contempt by those who had fled before her arms, and who bowed beneath her

fasces. Voltaire says, in one of his six thousand pamphlets, that he was the first person who told the French

that England had produced eminent men besides the Duke of Marlborough. Down to a very late period, the

Greeks seem to have stood in need of similar information with respect to their masters. With Paulus

Aemilius, Sylla, and Caesar, they were well acquainted. But the notions which they entertained respecting

Cicero and Virgil were, probably, not unlike those which Boileau may have formed about Shakspeare.

Dionysius lived in the most splendid age of Latin poetry and eloquence. He was a critic, and, after the manner

of his age, an able critic. He studied the language of Rome, associated with its learned men, and compiled its

history. Yet he seems to have thought its literature valuable only for the purpose of illustrating its antiquities.

His reading appears to have been confined to its public records, and to a few old annalists. Once, and but

once, if we remember rightly, he quotes Ennius, to solve a question of etymology. He has written much on

The Romans submitted to the pretensions of a race which they despised. Their epic poet, while he claimed for

them pre eminence in the arts of government and war, acknowledged their inferiority in taste, eloquence,

and science. Men of letters affected to understand the Greek language better than their own. Pomponius

preferred the honour of becoming an Athenian, by intellectual naturalisation, to all the distinctions which

were to be acquired in the political contests of Rome. His great friend composed Greek poems and memoirs.

It is wellknown that Petrarch considered that beautiful language in which his sonnets are written, as a

barbarous jargon, and intrusted his fame to those wretched Latin hexameters which, during the last four

centuries, have scarcely found four readers. Many eminent Romans appear to have felt the same contempt for

their native tongue as compared with the Greek. The prejudice continued to a very late period. Julian was as

partial to the Greek language as Frederic the Great to the French: and it seems that he could not express

Even those Latin writers who did not carry this affectation so far looked on Greece as the only fount of

knowledge. From Greece they derived the measures of their poetry, and, indeed, all of poetry that can be

imported. From Greece they borrowed the principles and the vocabulary of their philosophy. To the literature

of other nations they do not seem to have paid the slightest attention. The sacred books of the Hebrews, for

example, books which, considered merely as human compositions, are invaluable to the critic, the

antiquarian, and the philosopher, seem to have been utterly unnoticed by them. The peculiarities of Judaism,

and the rapid growth of Christianity, attracted their notice. They made war against the Jews. They made laws

against the Christians. But they never opened the books of Moses. Juvenal quotes the Pentateuch with

censure. The author of the treatise on "the Sublime" quotes it with praise: but both of them quote it

erroneously. When we consider what sublime poetry, what curious history, what striking and peculiar views

of the Divine nature and of the social duties of men, are to be found in the Jewish scriptures, when we

consider that two sects on which the attention of the government was constantly fixed appealed to those

scriptures as the rule of their faith and practice, this indifference is astonishing. The fact seems to be, that the

Greeks admired only themselves, and that the Romans admired only themselves and the Greeks. Literary men

turned away with disgust from modes of thought and expression so widely different from all that they had

been accustomed to admire. The effect was narrowness and sameness of thought. Their minds, if we may so

express ourselves, bred in and in, and were accordingly cursed with barrenness and degeneracy. No

extraneous beauty or vigour was engrafted on the decaying stock. By an exclusive attention to one class of

phenomena, by an exclusive taste for one species of excellence, the human intellect was stunted. Occasional

coincidences were turned into general rules. Prejudices were confounded with instincts. On man, as he was

found in a particular state of societyon government, as it had existed in a particular corner of the world,

many just observations were made; but of man as man, or government as government, little was known.

Philosophy remained stationary. Slight changes, sometimes for the worse and sometimes for the better, were

The vast despotism of the Caesars, gradually effacing all national peculiarities, and assimilating the remotest

provinces of the empire to each other, augmented the evil. At the close of the third century after Christ, the

prospects of mankind were fearfully dreary. A system of etiquette, as pompously frivolous as that of the

Escurial, had been established. A sovereign almost invisible; a crowd of dignitaries minutely distinguished by

badges and titles; rhetoricians who said nothing but what had been said ten thousand times; schools in which

nothing was taught but what had been known for ages: such was the machinery provided for the government

and instruction of the most enlightened part of the human race. That great community was then in danger of

experiencing a calamity far more terrible than any of the quick, inflammatory, destroying maladies, to which

nations are liable,a tottering, drivelling, paralytic longevity, the immortality of the Struldbrugs, a Chinese

civilisation. It would be easy to indicate many points of resemblance between the subjects of Diocletian and

the people of that Celestial Empire, where, during many centuries, nothing has been learned or unlearned;

where government, where education, where the whole system of life, is a ceremony; where knowledge

forgets to increase and multiply, and, like the talent buried in the earth, or the pound wrapped up in the

The torpor was broken by two great revolutions, the one moral, the other political, the one from within, the

other from without. The victory of Christianity over Paganism, considered with relation to this subject only,

was of great importance. It overthrew the old system of morals; and with it much of the old system of

metaphysics. It furnished the orator with new topics of declamation, and the logician with new points of

controversy. Above all, it introduced a new principle, of which the operation was constantly felt in every part

of society. It stirred the stagnant mass from the inmost depths. It excited all the passions of a stormy

democracy in the quiet and listless population of an overgrown empire. The fear of heresy did what the sense

of oppression could not do; it changed men, accustomed to be turned over like sheep from tyrant to tyrant,

into devoted partisans and obstinate rebels. The tones of an eloquence which had been silent for ages

resounded from the pulpit of Gregory. A spirit which had been extinguished on the plains of Philippi revived

Yet even this remedy was not sufficiently violent for the disease. It did not prevent the empire of

Constantinople from relapsing, after a short paroxysm of excitement, into a state of stupefaction, to which

history furnishes scarcely any parallel. We there find that a polished society, a society in which a most

intricate and elaborate system of jurisprudence was established, in which the arts of luxury were well

understood, in which the works of the great ancient writers were preserved and studied, existed for nearly a

thousand years without making one great discovery in science, or producing one book which is read by any

but curious inquirers. There were tumults, too, and controversies, and wars in abundance: and these things,

bad as they are in themselves, have generally been favourable to the progress of the intellect. But here they

tormented without stimulating. The waters were troubled; but no healing influence descended. The agitations

resembled the grinnings and writhings of a galvanised corpse, not the struggles of an athletic man.

From this miserable state the Western Empire was saved by the fiercest and most destroying visitation with

which God has ever chastened his creaturesthe invasion of the Northern nations. Such a cure was required

for such a distemper. The fire of London, it has been observed was a blessing. It burned down the city; but it

burned out the plague. The same may be said of the tremendous devastation of the Roman dominions. It

annihilated the noisome recesses in which lurked the seeds of great moral maladies; it cleared an atmosphere

fatal to the health and vigour of the human mind. It cost Europe a thousand years of barbarism to escape the

At length the terrible purification was accomplished; and the second civilisation of mankind commenced,

under circumstances which afforded a strong security that it would never retrograde and never pause. Europe

was now a great federal community. Her numerous states were united by the easy ties of international law

and a common religion. Their institutions, their languages, their manners, their tastes in literature, their

modes of education, were widely different. Their connection was close enough to allow of mutual

observation and improvement, yet not so close as to destroy the idioms of national opinion and feeling.

The balance of moral and intellectual influence thus established between the nations of Europe is far more

important than the balance of political power. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the latter is valuable

principally because it tends to maintain the former. The civilised world has thus been preserved from a

uniformity of character fatal to all improvement. Every part of it has been illuminated with light reflected

from every other. Competition has produced activity where monopoly would have produced sluggishness.

The number of experiments in moral science which the speculator has an opportunity of witnessing has been

increased beyond all calculation. Society and human nature, instead of being seen in a single point of view,

are presented to him under ten thousand different aspects. By observing the manners of surrounding nations,

by studying their literature, by comparing it with that of his own country and of the ancient republics, he is

enabled to correct those errors into which the most acute men must fall when they reason from a single

species to a genus. He learns to distinguish what is local from what is universal: what is transitory from what

is eternal; to discriminate between exceptions and rules; to trace the operation of disturbing causes; to

separate those general principles which are always true and everywhere applicable from the accidental

circumstances with which, in every community, they are blended, and with which, in an isolated community,

Hence it is that, in generalisation, the writers of modern times have far surpassed those of antiquity. The

historians of our own country are unequalled in depth and precision of reason; and, even in the works of our

mere compilers, we often meet with speculations beyond the reach of Thucydides or Tacitus.

But it must, at the same time, be admitted that they have characteristic faults, so closely connected with their

characteristic merits, and of such magnitude, that it may well be doubted whether, on the whole, this

department of literature has gained or lost during the last twoandtwenty centuries.

The best historians of later times have been seduced from truth, not by their imagination, but by their reason.

They far excel their predecessors in the art of deducing general principles from facts. But unhappily they

have fallen into the error of distorting facts to suit general principles. They arrive at a theory from looking at

some of the phenomena; and the remaining phenomena they strain or curtail to suit the theory. For this

purpose it is not necessary that they should assert what is absolutely false; for all questions in morals and

politics are questions of comparison and degree. Any proposition which does not involve a contradiction in

terms may by possibility be true; and, if all the circumstances which raise a probability in its favour, be stated

and enforced, and those which lead to an opposite conclusion be omitted or lightly passed over, it may appear

to be demonstrated. In every human character and transaction there is a mixture of good and evil: a little

exaggeration, a little suppression, a judicious use of epithets, a watchful and searching scepticism with

respect to the evidence on one side, a convenient credulity with respect to every report or tradition on the

This species of misrepresentation abounds in the most valuable works of modern historians. Herodotus tells

his story like a slovenly witness, who, heated by partialities and prejudices, unacquainted with the established

rules of evidence, and uninstructed as to the obligations of his oath, confounds what he imagines with what

he has seen and heard, and brings out facts, reports, conjectures, and fancies, in one mass. Hume is an

accomplished advocate. Without positively asserting much more than he can prove, he gives prominence to

all the circumstances which support his case; he glides lightly over those which are unfavourable to it; his

own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are

controverted; the contradictions into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected abstract of

their evidence is given. Everything that is offered on the other side is scrutinised with the utmost severity;

every suspicious circumstance is a ground for comment and invective; what cannot be denied is extenuated,

or passed by without notice; concessions even are sometimes made: but this insidious candour only increases

We have mentioned Hume as the ablest and most popular writer of his class; but the charge which we have

brought against him is one to which all our most distinguished historians are in some degree obnoxious.

Gibbon, in particular, deserves very severe censure. Of all the numerous culprits, however, none is more

deeply guilty than Mr Mitford. We willingly acknowledge the obligations which are due to his talents and

industry. The modern historians of Greece had been in the habit of writing as if the world had learned nothing

new during the last sixteen hundred years. Instead of illustrating the events which they narrated by the

philosophy of a more enlightened age, they judged of antiquity by itself alone. They seemed to think that

notions, long driven from every other corner of literature, had a prescriptive right to occupy this last fastness.

They considered all the ancient historians as equally authentic. They scarcely made any distinction between

him who related events at which he had himself been present and him who five hundred years after composed

a philosophic romance for a society which had in the interval undergone a complete change. It was all Greek,

and all true! The centuries which separated Plutarch from Thucydides seemed as nothing to men who lived in

an age so remote. The distance of time produced an error similar to that which is sometimes produced by

distance of place. There are many good ladies who think that all the people in India live together, and who

charge a friend setting out for Calcutta with kind messages to Bombay. To Rollin and Barthelemi, in the same

Mr Mitford certainly introduced great improvements; he showed us that men who wrote in Greek and Latin

sometimes told lies; he showed us that ancient history might be related in such a manner as to furnish not

only allusions to schoolboys, but important lessons to statesmen. From that love of theatrical effect and

highflown sentiment which had poisoned almost every other work on the same subject his book is perfectly

free. But his passion for a theory as false, and far more ungenerous, led him substantially to violate truth in

every page. Statements unfavourable to democracy are made with unhesitating confidence, and with the

utmost bitterness of language. Every charge brought against a monarch or an aristocracy is sifted with the

utmost care. If it cannot be denied, some palliating supposition is suggested; or we are at least reminded that

some circumstances now unknown MAY have justified what at present appears unjustifiable. Two events are

reported by the same author in the same sentence; their truth rests on the same testimony; but the one

supports the darling hypothesis, and the other seems inconsistent with it. The one is taken and the other is

The practice of distorting narrative into a conformity with theory is a vice not so unfavourable as at first sight

it may appear to the interests of political science. We have compared the writers who indulge in it to

advocates; and we may add, that their conflicting fallacies, like those of advocates, correct each other. It has

always been held, in the most enlightened nations, that a tribunal will decide a judicial question most fairly

when it has heard two able men argue, as unfairly as possible, on the two opposite sides of it; and we are

inclined to think that this opinion is just. Sometimes, it is true, superior eloquence and dexterity will make the

worse appear the better reason; but it is at least certain that the judge will be compelled to contemplate the

case under two different aspects. It is certain that no important consideration will altogether escape notice.

This is at present the state of history. The poet laureate appears for the Church of England, Lingard for the

Church of Rome. Brodie has moved to set aside the verdicts obtained by Hume; and the cause in which

Mitford succeeded is, we understand, about to be reheard. In the midst of these disputes, however, history

proper, if we may use the term, is disappearing. The high, grave, impartial summing up of Thucydides is

While our historians are practising all the arts of controversy, they miserably neglect the art of narration, the

art of interesting the affections and presenting pictures to the imagination. That a writer may produce these

effects without violating truth is sufficiently proved by many excellent biographical works. The immense

popularity which wellwritten books of this kind have acquired deserves the serious consideration of

historians. Voltaire's Charles the Twelfth, Marmontel's Memoirs, Boswell's Life of Johnson, Southey's

account of Nelson, are perused with delight by the most frivolous and indolent. Whenever any tolerable book

of the same description makes its appearance, the circulating libraries are mobbed; the book societies are in

commotion; the new novel lies uncut; the magazines and newspapers fill their columns with extracts. In the

meantime histories of great empires, written by men of eminent ability, lie unread on the shelves of

The writers of history seem to entertain an aristocratical contempt for the writers of memoirs. They think it

beneath the dignity of men who describe the revolutions of nations to dwell on the details which constitute

the charm of biography. They have imposed on themselves a code of conventional decencies as absurd as that

which has been the bane of the French drama. The most characteristic and interesting circumstances are

omitted or softened down, because, as we are told, they are too trivial for the majesty of history. The majesty

of history seems to resemble the majesty of the poor King of Spain, who died a martyr to ceremony because

That history would be more amusing if this etiquette were relaxed will, we suppose, be acknowledged. But

would it be less dignified or less useful? What do we mean when we say that one past event is important and

another insignificant? No past event has any intrinsic importance. The knowledge of it is valuable only as it

leads us to form just calculations with respect to the future. A history which does not serve this purpose,

though it may be filled with battles, treaties, and commotions, is as useless as the series of turnpike tickets

Let us suppose that Lord Clarendon, instead of filling hundreds of folio pages with copies of state papers, in

which the same assertions and contradictions are repeated till the reader is overpowered with weariness, had

condescended to be the Boswell of the Long Parliament. Let us suppose that he had exhibited to us the wise

and lofty selfgovernment of Hampden, leading while he seemed to follow, and propounding unanswerable

arguments in the strongest forms with the modest air of an inquirer anxious for information; the delusions

which misled the noble spirit of Vane; the coarse fanaticism which concealed the yet loftier genius of

Cromwell, destined to control a motionless army and a factious people, to abase the flag of Holland, to arrest

the victorious arms of Sweden, and to hold the balance firm between the rival monarchies of France and

Spain. Let us suppose that he had made his Cavaliers and Roundheads talk in their own style; that he had

reported some of the ribaldry of Rupert's pages, and some of the cant of Harrison and Fleetwood. Would not

his work in that case have been more interesting? Would it not have been more accurate?

A history in which every particular incident may be true may on the whole be false. The circumstances which

have most influence on the happiness of mankind, the changes of manners and morals, the transition of

communities from poverty to wealth, from knowledge to ignorance, from ferocity to humanitythese are,

for the most part, noiseless revolutions. Their progress is rarely indicated by what historians are pleased to

call important events. They are not achieved by armies, or enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by no

treaties, and recorded in no archives. They are carried on in every school, in every church, behind ten

thousand counters, at ten thousand firesides. The upper current of society presents no certain criterion by

which we can judge of the direction in which the under current flows. We read of defeats and victories. But

we know that nations may be miserable amidst victories and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of

wise ministers and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remember how small a proportion the

good or evil effected by a single statesman can bear to the good or evil of a great social system.

Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a gnat mounted on an elephant, and laying down theories as to the

whole internal structure of the vast animal, from the phenomena of the hide. The comparison is unjust to the

geologists; but is very applicable to those historians who write as if the body politic were homogeneous, who

look only on the surface of affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organisation which lies deep

In the works of such writers as these, England, at the close of the Seven Years' War, is in the highest state of

prosperity: at the close of the American war she is in a miserable and degraded condition; as if the people

were not on the whole as rich, as well governed, and as well educated at the latter period as at the former. We

have read books called Histories of England, under the reign of George the Second, in which the rise of

Methodism is not even mentioned. A hundred years hence this breed of authors will, we hope, be extinct. If it

should still exist, the late ministerial interregnum will be described in terms which will seem to imply that all

government was at an end; that the social contract was annulled; and that the hand of every man was against

his neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet educed order out of the chaos of anarchy. We

are quite certain that misconceptions as gross prevail at this moment respecting many important parts of our

The effect of historical reading is analogous, in many respects, to that produced by foreign travel. The

student, like the tourist, is transported into a new state of society. He sees new fashions. He hears new modes

of expression. His mind is enlarged by contemplating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners.

But men may travel far, and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from their own

markettown. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many battles and the genealogies of many

royal houses, and yet be no wiser. Most people look at past times as princes look at foreign countries. More

than one illustrious stranger has landed on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the king, has

hunted with the master of the staghounds, has seen the guards reviewed, and a knight of the garter installed,

has cantered along Regent Street, has visited Saint Paul's, and noted down its dimensions; and has then

departed, thinking that he has seen England. He has, in fact, seen a few public buildings, public men, and

public ceremonies. But of the vast and complex system of society, of the fine shades of national character, of

the practical operation of government and laws, he knows nothing. He who would understand these things

rightly must not confine his observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordinary men as they

appear in their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of the

exchange and the coffeehouse. He must obtain admittance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He

must bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring even the retreats of misery. He who

wishes to understand the condition of mankind in former ages must proceed on the same principle. If he

attends only to public transactions, to wars, congresses, and debates, his studies will be as unprofitable as the

travels of those imperial, royal, and serene sovereigns who form their judgment of our island from having

gone in state to a few fine sights, and from having held formal conferences with a few great officers.

The perfect historian is he in whose work the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in miniature. He

relates no fact, he attributes no expression to his characters, which is not authenticated by sufficient

testimony. But, by judicious selection, rejection, and arrangement, he gives to truth those attractions which

have been usurped by fiction. In his narrative a due subordination is observed: some transactions are

prominent; others retire. But the scale on which he represents them is increased or diminished, not according

to the dignity of the persons concerned in them, but according to the degree in which they elucidate the

condition of society and the nature of man. He shows us the court, the camp, and the senate. But he shows us

also the nation. He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignificant

for his notice which is not too insignificant to illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of education,

and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not merely be described, but will be made intimately

known to us. The changes of manners will be indicated, not merely by a few general phrases or a few extracts

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England, he would assuredly not omit the

battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would intersperse

the details which are the charm of historical romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful painted

window, which was made by an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by his master.

It is so far superior to every other in the church, that, according to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed

himself from mortification. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those fragments of truth which

historians have scornfully thrown behind them in a manner which may well excite their envy. He has

constructed out of their gleanings works which, even considered as histories, are scarcely less valuable than

theirs. But a truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the novelist has appropriated. The

history of the government, and the history of the people, would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they

can be exhibited justly, in inseparable conjunction and intermixture. We should not then have to look for the

wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology in Old Mortality; for one half of King

The early part of our imaginary history would be rich with colouring from romance, ballad, and chronicle.

We should find ourselves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as those

who rode with Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest, from the

royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw; from the throne of the legate to the chimneycorner where the

begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders,the stately monastery, with the good cheer in

its refectory and the highmass in its chapel,the manorhouse, with its hunting and hawking,the

tournament, with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold,would give truth and life to the

representation. We should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the importance of the privileged burgher,

and the fierce and haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of the degraded villain. The revival of letters

would not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. We should discern, in innumerable particulars,

the fermentation of mind, the eager appetite for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the

fifteenth century. In the Reformation we should see, not merely a schism which changed the ecclesiastical

constitution of England and the mutual relations of the European powers, but a moral war which raged in

every family, which set the father against the son, and the son against the father, the mother against the

daughter, and the daughter against the mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should

have the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his savage and imperious old age. We

should perceive the gradual progress of selfish and tyrannical passions in a mind not naturally insensible or

ungenerous; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open and noble temper which endeared

him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of disease.

We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites

whom she never trusted, and the wise old statesmen whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself the most

contradictory qualities of both her parents,the coquetry, the caprice, the petty malice of Anne,the

haughty and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesitation in saying that a great artist might produce a

portrait of this remarkable woman at least as striking as that in the novel of Kenilworth, without employing a

single trait not authenticated by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should see arts cultivated, wealth

accumulated, the conveniences of life improved. We should see the keeps, where nobles, insecure

themselves, spread insecurity around them, gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the

oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns extended, deserts cultivated,

the hamlets of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his hut more

commodiously furnished. We should see those opinions and feelings which produced the great struggle

against the House of Stuart slowly growing up in the bosom of private families, before they manifested

themselves in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil war. Those skirmishes on which Clarendon

dwells so minutely would be told, as Thucydides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. They

are merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English

gentry, the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the

royal cause,the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the independent

preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the

absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans,the valour, the policy, the public spirit, which lurked

beneath these ungraceful disguises,the dreams of the raving Fifthmonarchyman, the dreams, scarcely

less wild, of the philosophic republican, all these would enter into the representation, and render it at once

The instruction derived from history thus written would be of a vivid and practical character. It would be

received by the imagination as well as by the reason. It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded

into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. As the history of states

is generally written, the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like supernatural

inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the

consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which

originally proceed far before their progress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the

domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events. A narrative,

defective in this respect, is as useless as a medical treatise which should pass by all the symptoms attendant

on the early stage of a disease and mention only what occurs when the patient is beyond the reach of

A historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. In his

mind, powers scarcely compatible with each other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. We shall

sooner see another Shakspeare or another Homer. The highest excellence to which any single faculty can be

brought would be less surprising than such a happy and delicate combination of qualities. Yet the

contemplation of imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the mind. It cannot indeed

produce perfection; but it produces improvement and nourishes that generous and liberal fastidiousness which

is not inconsistent with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which, while it exalts our conceptions of the art,

"Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, the Liberty of the Press, Prisons, and Prison Discipline, Colonies, the

Law of Nations, and Education." By James Mill, Esq., author of the History of British India. Reprinted by

permission from the Supplement to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. (Not for sale.) London, 1828.

Of those philosophers who call themselves Utilitarians, and whom others generally call Benthamites, Mr Mill

is, with the exception of the illustrious founder of the sect, by far the most distinguished. The little work now

before us contains a summary of the opinions held by this gentleman and his brethren on several subjects

most important to society. All the seven essays of which it consists abound in curious matter. But at present

we intend to confine our remarks to the Treatise on Government, which stands first in the volume. On some

It must be owned that to do justice to any composition of Mr Mill is not, in the opinion of his admirers, a very

easy task. They do not, indeed, place him in the same rank with Mr Bentham; but the terms in which they

extol the disciple, though feeble when compared with the hyperboles of adoration employed by them in

speaking of the master, are as strong as any sober man would allow himself to use concerning Locke or

Bacon. The essay before us is perhaps the most remarkable of the works to which Mr Mill owes his fame. By

the members of his sect, it is considered as perfect and unanswerable. Every part of it is an article of their

faith; and the damnatory clauses, in which their creed abounds far beyond any theological symbol with which

we are acquainted, are strong and full against all who reject any portion of what is so irrefragably established.

No man, they maintain, who has understanding sufficient to carry him through the first proposition of Euclid,

can read this masterpiece of demonstration and honestly declare that he remains unconvinced.

We have formed a very different opinion of this work. We think that the theory of Mr Mill rests altogether on

false principles, and that even on those false principles he does not reason logically. Nevertheless, we do not

think it strange that his speculations should have filled the Utilitarians with admiration. We have been for

some time past inclined to suspect that these people, whom some regard as the lights of the world and others

as incarnate demons, are in general ordinary men, with narrow understandings and little information. The

contempt which they express for elegant literature is evidently the contempt of ignorance. We apprehend that

many of them are persons who, having read little or nothing, are delighted to be rescued from the sense of

their own inferiority by some teacher who assures them that the studies which they have neglected are of no

value, puts five or six phrases into their mouths, lends them an old number of the Westminster Review, and in

a month transforms them into philosophers. Mingled with these smatterers, whose attainments just suffice to

elevate them from the insignificance of dunces to the dignity of bores, and to spread dismay among their

pious aunts and grandmothers, there are, we well know, many wellmeaning men who have really read and

thought much; but whose reading and meditation have been almost exclusively confined to one class of

subjects; and who, consequently, though they possess much valuable knowledge respecting those subjects,

are by no means so well qualified to judge of a great system as if they had taken a more enlarged view of

Nothing is more amusing or instructive than to observe the manner in which people who think themselves

wiser than all the rest of the world fall into snares which the simple good sense of their neighbours detects

and avoids. It is one of the principle tenets of the Utilitarians that sentiment and eloquence serve only to

impede the pursuit of truth. They therefore affect a quakerly plainness, or rather a cynical negligence and

impurity, of style. The strongest arguments, when clothed in brilliant language, seem to them so much wordy

nonsense. In the meantime they surrender their understandings, with a facility found in no other party, to the

meanest and most abject sophisms, provided those sophisms come before them disguised with the externals

of demonstration. They do not seem to know that logic has its illusions as well as rhetoric,that a fallacy

Mr Mill is exactly the writer to please people of this description. His arguments are stated with the utmost

affectation of precision; his divisions are awfully formal; and his style is generally as dry as that of Euclid's

Elements. Whether this be a merit, we must be permitted to doubt. Thus much is certain: that the ages in

which the true principles of philosophy were least understood were those in which the ceremonial of logic

was most strictly observed, and that the time from which we date the rapid progress of the experimental

sciences was also the time at which a less exact and formal way of writing came into use.

The style which the Utilitarians admire suits only those subjects on which it is possible to reason a priori. It

grew up with the verbal sophistry which flourished during the dark ages. With that sophistry it fell before the

Baconian philosopher in the day of the great deliverance of the human mind. The inductive method not only

endured but required greater freedom of diction. It was impossible to reason from phenomena up to

principles, to mark slight shades of difference in quality, or to estimate the comparative effect of two opposite

considerations between which there was no common measure, by means of the naked and meagre jargon of

the schoolmen. Of those schoolmen Mr Mill has inherited both the spirit and the style. He is an Aristotelian

of the fifteenth century, born out of due season. We have here an elaborate treatise on Government, from

which, but for two or three passing allusions, it would not appear that the author was aware that any

governments actually existed among men. Certain propensities of human nature are assumed; and from these

premises the whole science of politics is synthetically deduced! We can scarcely persuade ourselves that we

are not reading a book written before the time of Bacon and Galileo,a book written in those days in which

physicians reasoned from the nature of heat to the treatment of fever, and astronomers proved syllogistically

that the planets could have no independent motion,because the heavens were incorruptible, and nature

The reason, too, which Mr Mill has assigned for taking this course strikes us as most extraordinary.

"Experience," says he, "if we look only at the outside of the facts, appears to be DIVIDED on this subject.

Absolute monarchy, under Neros and Caligulas, under such men as the Emperors of Morocco and Sultans of

Turkey, is the scourge of human nature. On the other side, the people of Denmark, tired out with the

oppression of an aristocracy, resolved that their king should be absolute; and, under their absolute monarch,

This Mr Mill actually gives as a reason for pursuing the a priori method. But, in our judgment, the very

circumstances which he mentions irresistibly prove that the a priori method is altogether unfit for

investigations of this kind, and that the only way to arrive at the truth is by induction. EXPERIENCE can

never be divided, or even appear to be divided, except with reference to some hypothesis. When we say that

one fact is inconsistent with another fact, we mean only that it is inconsistent with THE THEORY which we

have founded on that other fact. But, if the fact be certain, the unavoidable conclusion is that our theory is

false; and, in order to correct it, we must reason back from an enlarged collection of facts to principles.

Now here we have two governments which, by Mr Mill's own account, come under the same head in his

THEORETICAL classification. It is evident, therefore, that, by reasoning on that theoretical classification,

we shall be brought to the conclusion that these two forms of government must produce the same effects. But

Mr Mill himself tells us that they do not produce the same effects. Hence he infers that the only way to get at

truth is to place implicit confidence in that chain of proof a priori from which it appears that they must

produce the same effects! To believe at once in a theory and in a fact which contradicts it is an exercise of

faith sufficiently hard: but to believe in a theory BECAUSE a fact contradicts it is what neither philosopher

nor pope ever before required. This, however, is what Mr Mill demands of us. He seems to think that, if all

despots, without exception, governed ill, it would be unnecessary to prove, by a synthetical argument, what

would then be sufficiently clear from experience. But, as some despots will be so perverse as to govern well,

he finds himself compelled to prove the impossibility of their governing well by that synthetical argument

which would have been superfluous had not the facts contradicted it. He reasons a priori, because the

phenomena are not what, by reasoning a priori, he will prove them to be. In other words, he reasons a priori,

In the course of the examination to which we propose to subject the speculations of Mr Mill we shall have to

notice many other curious instances of that turn of mind which the passage above quoted indicates.

The first chapter of his Essay relates to the ends of government. The conception on this subject, he tells us,

which exists in the minds of most men is vague and undistinguishing. He first assumes, justly enough, that

the end of government is "to increase to the utmost the pleasures, and diminish to the utmost the pains, which

men derive from each other." He then proceeds to show, with great form, that "the greatest possible happiness

of society is attained by insuring to every man the greatest possible quantity of the produce of his labour." To

effect this is, in his opinion, the end of government. It is remarkable that Mr Mill, with all his affected display

of precision, has here given a description of the ends of government far less precise than that which is in the

mouths of the vulgar. The first man with whom Mr Mill may travel in a stage coach will tell him that

government exists for the protection of the PERSONS and property of men. But Mr Mill seems to think that

the preservation of property is the first and only object. It is true, doubtless, that many of the injuries which

are offered to the persons of men proceed from a desire to possess their property. But the practice of

vindictive assassination as it has existed in some parts of Europethe practice of fighting wanton and

sanguinary duels, like those of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in which bands of seconds risked their

lives as well as the principals;these practices, and many others which might be named, are evidently

injurious to society; and we do not see how a government which tolerated them could be said "to diminish to

the utmost the pains which men derive from each other." Therefore, according to Mr Mill's very correct

assumption, such a government would not perfectly accomplish the end of its institution. Yet such a

government might, as far as we can perceive, "insure to every man the greatest possible quantity of the

produce of his labour." Therefore such a government might, according to Mr Mill's subsequent doctrine,

perfectly accomplish the end of its institution. The matter is not of much consequence, except as an instance

of that slovenliness of thinking which is often concealed beneath a peculiar ostentation of logical neatness.

Having determined the ends, Mr Mill proceeds to consider the means. For the preservation of property some

portion of the community must be intrusted with power. This is government; and the question is, how are

Mr Mill first passes in review the simple forms of government. He allows that it would be inconvenient, if

not physically impossible, that the whole community should meet in a mass; it follows, therefore, that the

powers of government cannot be directly exercised by the people. But he sees no objection to pure and direct

"The community," says he, "cannot have an interest opposite to its interests. To affirm this would be a

contradiction in terms. The community within itself, and with respect to itself, can have no sinister interest.

One community may intend the evil of another; never its own. This is an indubitable proposition, and one of

Mr Mill then proceeds to demonstrate that a purely aristocratical form of government is necessarily bad.

"The reason for which government exists is, that one man, if stronger than another, will take from him

whatever that other possesses and he desires. But if one man will do this, so will several. And if powers are

put into the hands of a comparatively small number, called an aristocracy,powers which make them

stronger than the rest of the community, they will take from the rest of the community as much as they please

of the objects of desire. They will thus defeat the very end for which government was instituted. The

unfitness, therefore, of an aristocracy to be intrusted with the powers of government, rests on demonstration.

In exactly the same manner Mr Mill proves absolute monarchy to be a bad form of government.

"If government is founded upon this as a law of human nature, that a man, if able, will take from others

anything which they have and he desires, it is sufficiently evident, that when a man is called a king he does

not change his nature; so that when he has got power to enable him to take from every man what he pleases,

he will take whatever he pleases. To suppose that he will not, is to affirm that government is unnecessary, and

"It is very evident that this reasoning extends to every modification of the smaller number. Whenever the

powers of government are placed in any hands other than those of the community, whether those of one man,

of a few, or of several, those principles of human nature which imply that government is at all necessary,

imply that those persons will make use of them to defeat the very end for which government exists."

But is it not possible that a king or an aristocracy may soon be saturated with the objects of their desires, and

may then protect the community in the enjoyment of the rest? Mr Mill answers in the negative. He proves,

with great pomp, that every man desires to have the actions of every other correspondent to his will. Others

can be induced to conform to our will only by motives derived from pleasure or from pain. The infliction of

pain is of course direct injury; and, even if it take the milder course, in order to produce obedience by motives

derived from pleasure, the government must confer favours. But, as there is no limit to its desire of

obedience, there will be no limit to its disposition to confer favours; and, as it can confer favours only by

plundering the people, there will be no limit to its disposition to plunder the people. It is therefore not true

that there is in the mind of a king, or in the minds of an aristocracy, any point of saturation with the objects of

Mr Mill then proceeds to show that, as monarchical and oligarchical governments can influence men by

motives drawn from pain, as well as by motives drawn from pleasure, they will carry their cruelty, as well as

their rapacity, to a frightful extent. As he seems greatly to admire his own reasonings on this subject, we

"The chain of inference in this case is close and strong to a most unusual degree. A man desires that the

actions of other men shall be instantly and accurately correspondent to his will. He desires that the actions of

the greatest possible number shall be so. Terror is the grand instrument. Terror can work only through

assurance that evil will follow any failure of conformity between the will and the actions willed. Every failure

must therefore be punished. As there are no bounds to the mind's desire of its pleasure, there are, of course,

no bounds to its desire of perfection in the instruments of that pleasure. There are, therefore, no bounds to its

desire of exactness in the conformity between its will and the actions willed; and by consequence to the

strength of that terror which is its procuring cause. Even the most minute failure must be visited with the

heaviest infliction; and as failure in extreme exactness must frequently happen, the occasions of cruelty must

"We have thus arrived at several conclusions of the highest possible importance. We have seen that the

principle of human nature, upon which the necessity of government is founded, the propensity of one man to

possess himself of the objects of desire at the cost of another, leads on, by infallible sequence, where power

over a community is attained, and nothing checks, not only to that degree of plunder which leaves the

members (excepting always the recipients and instruments of the plunder) the bare means of subsistence, but

to that degree of cruelty which is necessary to keep in existence the most intense terrors."

Now, no man who has the least knowledge of the real state of the world, either in former ages or at the

present moment, can possibly be convinced, though he may perhaps be bewildered, by arguments like these.

During the last two centuries, some hundreds of absolute princes have reigned in Europe. Is it true, that their

cruelty has kept in existence the most intense degree of terror; that their rapacity has left no more than the

bare means of subsistence to any of their subjects, their ministers and soldiers excepted? Is this true of all of

them? Of one half of them? Of one tenth part of them? Of a single one? Is it true, in the full extent, even of

Philip the Second, of Louis the Fifteenth, or of the Emperor Paul? But it is scarcely necessary to quote

history. No man of common sense, however ignorant he may be of books, can be imposed on by Mr Mill's

argument; because no man of common sense can live among his fellowcreatures for a day without seeing

innumerable facts which contradict it. It is our business, however, to point out its fallacy; and happily the

We grant that rulers will take as much as they can of the objects of their desires; and that, when the agency of

other men is necessary to that end, they will attempt by all means in their power to enforce the prompt

obedience of such men. But what are the objects of human desire? Physical pleasure, no doubt, in part. But

the mere appetites which we have in common with the animals would be gratified almost as cheaply and

easily as those of the animals are gratified, if nothing were given to taste, to ostentation, or to the affections.

How small a portion of the income of a gentleman in easy circumstances is laid out merely in giving

pleasurable sensations to the body of the possessor! The greater part even of what is spent on his kitchen and

his cellar goes, not to titillate his palate, but to keep up his character for hospitality, to save him from the

reproach of meanness in housekeeping, and to cement the ties of good neighbourhood. It is clear that a king

or an aristocracy may be supplied to satiety with mere corporal pleasures, at an expense which the rudest and

Those tastes and propensities which belong to us as reasoning and imaginative beings are not indeed so easily

gratified. There is, we admit, no point of saturation with objects of desire which come under this head. And

therefore the argument of Mr Mill will be just, unless there be something in the nature of the objects of desire

themselves which is inconsistent with it. Now, of these objects there is none which men in general seem to

desire more than the good opinion of others. The hatred and contempt of the public are generally felt to be

intolerable. It is probable that our regard for the sentiments of our fellowcreatures springs, by association,

from a sense of their ability to hurt or to serve us. But, be this as it may, it is notorious that, when the habit of

mind of which we speak has once been formed, men feel extremely solicitous about the opinions of those by

whom it is most improbable, nay, absolutely impossible, that they should ever be in the slightest degree

injured or benefited. The desire of posthumous fame and the dread of posthumous reproach and execration

are feelings from the influence of which scarcely any man is perfectly free, and which in many men are

powerful and constant motives of action. As we are afraid that, if we handle this part of the argument after

our own manner, we shall incur the reproach of sentimentality, a word which, in the sacred language of the

Benthamites, is synonymous with idiocy, we will quote what Mr Mill himself says on the subject, in his

"Pains from the moral source are the pains derived from the unfavourable sentiments of mankind...These

pains are capable of rising to a height with which hardly any other pains incident to our nature can be

compared. There is a certain degree of unfavourableness in the sentiments of his fellowcreatures, under

"The importance of this powerful agency, for the prevention of injurious acts, is too obvious to need to be

illustrated. If sufficiently at command, it would almost supersede the use of other means...

"To know how to direct the unfavourable sentiments of mankind, it is necessary to know in as complete, that

is, in as comprehensive, a way as possible, what it is which gives them birth. Without entering into the

metaphysics of the question, it is a sufficient practical answer, for the present purpose, to say that the

It is strange that a writer who considers the pain derived from the unfavourable sentiments of others as so

acute that, if sufficiently at command, it would supersede the use of the gallows and the treadmill, should

take no notice of this most important restraint when discussing the question of government. We will attempt

to deduce a theory of politics in the mathematical form, in which Mr Mill delights, from the premises with

This is the thesis to be maintained; and the following we humbly offer to Mr Mill, as its syllogistic

Therefore no rulers will do anything which may excite the unfavourable sentiments of the people.

But the unfavourable sentiments of the people are excited by everything which hurts them.

Therefore no rulers will do anything which may hurt the people. Which was the thing to be proved.

Having thus, as we think, not unsuccessfully imitated Mr Mill's logic, we do not see why we should not

imitate, what is at least equally perfect in its kind, its selfcomplacency, and proclaim our Eureka in his own

words: "The chain of inference, in this case, is close and strong to a most unusual degree."

The fact is, that, when men, in treating of things which cannot be circumscribed by precise definitions, adopt

this mode of reasoning, when once they begin to talk of power, happiness, misery, pain, pleasure, motives,

objects of desire, as they talk of lines and numbers, there is no end to the contradictions and absurdities into

which they fall. There is no proposition so monstrously untrue in morals or politics that we will not undertake

to prove it, by something which shall sound like a logical demonstration from admitted principles.

Mr Mill argues that, if men are not inclined to plunder each other, government is unnecessary; and that, if

they are so inclined, the powers of government, when entrusted to a small number of them, will necessarily

be abused. Surely it is not by propounding dilemmas of this sort that we are likely to arrive at sound

conclusions in any moral science. The whole question is a question of degree. If all men preferred the

moderate approbation of their neighbours to any degree of wealth or grandeur, or sensual pleasure,

government would be unnecessary. If all men desired wealth so intensely as to be willing to brave the hatred

of their fellowcreatures for sixpence, Mr Mill's argument against monarchies and aristocracies would be true

to the full extent. But the fact is, that all men have some desires which impel them to injure their neighbours,

and some desires which impel them to benefit their neighbours. Now, if there were a community consisting of

two classes of men, one of which should be principally influenced by the one set of motives and the other by

the other, government would clearly be necessary to restrain the class which was eager for plunder and

careless of reputation: and yet the powers of government might be safely intrusted to the class which was

chiefly actuated by the love of approbation. Now, it might with no small plausibility be maintained that, in

many countries, THERE ARE two classes which, in some degree, answer to this description; that the poor

compose the class which government is established to restrain, and the people of some property the class to

which the powers of government may without danger be confided. It might be said that a man who can barely

earn a livelihood by severe labour is under stronger temptations to pillage others than a man who enjoys

many luxuries. It might be said that a man who is lost in the crowd is less likely to have the fear of public

opinion before his eyes than a man whose station and mode of living render him conspicuous. We do not

assert all this. We only say that it was Mr Mill's business to prove the contrary; and that, not having proved

the contrary, he is not entitled to say, "that those principles which imply that government is at all necessary,

imply that an aristocracy will make use of its power to defeat the end for which governments exist." This is

not true, unless it be true that a rich man is as likely to covet the goods of his neighbours as a poor man, and

that a poor man is as likely to be solicitous about the opinions of his neighbours as a rich man.

But we do not see that, by reasoning a priori on such subjects as these, it is possible to advance one single

step. We know that every man has some desires which he can gratify only by hurting his neighbours, and

some which he can gratify only by pleasing them. Mr Mill has chosen to look only at onehalf of human

nature, and to reason on the motives which impel men to oppress and despoil others, as if they were the only

motives by which men could possibly be influenced. We have already shown that, by taking the other half of

the human character, and reasoning on it as if it were the whole, we can bring out a result diametrically

opposite to that at which Mr Mill has arrived. We can, by such a process, easily prove that any form of

Does any combination of the three simple forms of government afford the requisite securities against the

abuse of power? Mr Mill complains that those who maintain the affirmative generally beg the question; and

proceeds to settle the point by proving, after his fashion, that no combination of the three simple forms, or of

"From the principles which we have already laid down it follows that, of the objects of human desire, and,

speaking more definitely, of the means to the ends of human desire, namely, wealth and power, each party

"If any expedient presents itself to any of the supposed parties effectual to this end, and not opposed to any

preferred object of pursuit, we may infer with certainty that it will be adopted. One effectual expedient is not

more effectual than obvious. Any two of the parties, by combining, may swallow up the third. That such

combination will take place appears to be as certain as anything which depends upon human will; because

there are strong motives in favour of it, and none that can be conceived in opposition to it...The mixture of

three of the kinds of government, it is thus evident, cannot possibly exist...It may be proper to enquire

"Let us first suppose, that monarchy is united with aristocracy. Their power is equal or not equal. If it is not

equal, it follows, as a necessary consequence, from the principles which we have already established, that the

stronger will take from the weaker till it engrosses the whole. The only question therefore is, What will

"In the first place, it seems impossible that such equality should ever exist. How is it to be established? or, by

what criterion is it to be ascertained? If there is no such criterion, it must, in all cases, be the result of chance.

If so, the chances against it are as infinity to one. The idea, therefore, is wholly chimerical and absurd...

"In this doctrine of the mixture of the simple forms of government is included the celebrated theory of the

balance among the component parts of a government. By this it is supposed that, when a government is

composed of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, they balance one another, and by mutual checks produce

good government. A few words will suffice to show that, if any theory deserves the epithets of 'wild,

visionary, and chimerical,' it is that of the balance. If there are three powers, how is it possible to prevent two

"The analysis which we have already performed will enable us to trace rapidly the concatenation of causes

"We have already seen that the interests of the community, considered in the aggregate, or in the

democratical point of view, is, that each individual should receive protection; and that the powers which are

constituted for that purpose should be employed exclusively for that purpose...We have also seen that the

interest of the king and of the governing aristocracy is directly the reverse. It is to have unlimited power over

the rest of the community, and to use it for their own advantage. In the supposed case of the balance of the

monarchical, aristocratical, and democratical powers, it cannot be for the interest of either the monarchy or

the aristocracy to combine with the democracy; because it is the interest of the democracy, or community at

large, that neither the king nor the aristocracy should have one particle of power, or one particle of the wealth

"The democracy or community have all possible motives to endeavour to prevent the monarchy and

aristocracy from exercising power, or obtaining the wealth of the community for their own advantage. The

monarchy and aristocracy have all possible motives for endeavouring to obtain unlimited power over the

persons and property of the community. The consequence is inevitable: they have all possible motives for

If any part of this passage be more eminently absurd than another, it is, we think, the argument by which Mr

Mill proves that there cannot be an union of monarchy and aristocracy. Their power, he says, must be equal

or not equal. But of equality there is no criterion. Therefore the chances against its existence are as infinity to

one. If the power be not equal, then it follows, from the principles of human nature, that the stronger will take

Now, if there be no criterion of equality between two portions of power there can be no common measure of

portions of power. Therefore it is utterly impossible to compare them together. But where two portions of

power are of the same kind, there is no difficulty in ascertaining, sufficiently for all practical purposes,

whether they are equal or unequal. It is easy to judge whether two men run equally fast, or can lift equal

weights. Two arbitrators, whose joint decision is to be final, and neither of whom can do anything without the

assent of the other, possess equal power. Two electors, each of whom has a vote for a borough, possess, in

that respect, equal power. If not, all Mr Mill's political theories fall to the ground at once. For, if it be

impossible to ascertain whether two portions of power are equal, he never can show that even under a system

of universal suffrage, a minority might not carry every thing their own way, against the wishes and interests

Where there are two portions of power differing in kind, there is, we admit, no criterion of equality. But then,

in such a case, it is absurd to talk, as Mr Mill does, about the stronger and the weaker. Popularly, indeed, and

with reference to some particular objects, these words may very fairly be used. But to use them

mathematically is altogether improper. If we are speaking of a boxingmatch, we may say that some famous

bruiser has greater bodily power than any man in England. If we are speaking of a pantomime, we may say

the same of some very agile harlequin. But it would be talking nonsense to say, in general, that the power of

If Mr Mill's argument be good as between different branches of a legislature, it is equally good as between

sovereign powers. Every government, it may be said, will, if it can, take the objects of its desires from every

other. If the French government can subdue England it will do so. If the English government can subdue

France it will do so. But the power of England and France is either equal or not equal. The chance that it is

not exactly equal is as infinity to one, and may safely be left out of the account; and then the stronger will

Surely the answer to all this hubbub of unmeaning words is the plainest possible. For some purposes France

is stronger than England. For some purposes England is stronger than France. For some, neither has any

power at all. France has the greater population, England the greater capital; France has the greater army,

England the greater fleet. For an expedition to Rio Janeiro or the Philippines, England has the greater power.

For a war on the Po or the Danube, France has the greater power. But neither has power sufficient to keep the

other in quiet subjection for a month. Invasion would be very perilous; the idea of complete conquest on

either side utterly ridiculous. This is the manly and sensible way of discussing such questions. The ergo, or

rather the argal, of Mr Mill cannot impose on a child. Yet we ought scarcely to say this; for we remember to

Mr Mill reminds us of those philosophers of the sixteenth century who, having satisfied themselves a priori

that the rapidity with which bodies descended to the earth varied exactly as their weights, refused to believe

the contrary on the evidence of their own eyes and ears. The British constitution, according to Mr Mill's

classification, is a mixture of monarchy and aristocracy; one House of Parliament being composed of

hereditary nobles, and the other almost entirely chosen by a privileged class who possess the elective

franchise on account of their property, or their connection with certain corporations. Mr Mill's argument

proves that, from the time that these two powers were mingled in our government, that is, from the very first

dawn of our history, one or the other must have been constantly encroaching. According to him, moreover, all

the encroachments must have been on one side. For the first encroachment could only have been made by the

stronger; and that first encroachment would have made the stronger stronger still. It is, therefore, matter of

absolute demonstration, that either the Parliament was stronger than the Crown in the reign of Henry VIII., or

that the Crown was stronger than the Parliament in 1641. "Hippocrate dira ce que lui plaira," says the girl in

Moliere; "mais le cocher est mort." Mr Mill may say what he pleases; but the English constitution is still

alive. That since the Revolution the Parliament has possessed great power in the State, is what nobody will

dispute. The King, on the other hand, can create new peers, and can dissolve Parliaments. William sustained

severe mortifications from the House of Commons, and was, indeed, unjustifiably oppressed. Anne was

desirous to change a ministry which had a majority in both Houses. She watched her moment for a

dissolution, created twelve Tory peers, and succeeded. Thirty years later, the House of Commons drove

Walpole from his seat. In 1784, George III. was able to keep Mr Pitt in office in the face of a majority of the

House of Commons. In 1804, the apprehension of a defeat in Parliament compelled the same King to part

from his most favoured minister. But, in 1807, he was able to do exactly what Anne had done nearly a

hundred years before. Now, had the power of the King increased during the intervening century, or had it

remained stationary? Is it possible that the one lot among the infinite number should have fallen to us? If not,

Mr Mill has proved that one of the two parties must have been constantly taking from the other. Many of the

ablest men in England think that the influence of the Crown has, on the whole, increased since the reign of

Anne. Others think that the Parliament has been growing in strength. But of this there is no doubt, that both

sides possessed great power then, and possess great power now. Surely, if there were the least truth in the

argument of Mr Mill, it could not possibly be a matter of doubt, at the end of a hundred and twenty years,

But we ask pardon. We forgot that a fact, irreconcilable with Mr Mill's theory, furnishes, in his opinion, the

strongest reason for adhering to the theory. To take up the question in another manner, is it not plain that

there may be two bodies, each possessing a perfect and entire power, which cannot be taken from it without

its own concurrence? What is the meaning of the words stronger and weaker, when applied to such bodies as

these? The one may, indeed, by physical force, altogether destroy the other. But this is not the question. A

third party, a general of their own, for example, may, by physical force, subjugate them both. Nor is there any

form of government, Mr Mill's utopian democracy not excepted, secure from such an occurrence. We are

speaking of the powers with which the constitution invests the two branches of the legislature; and we ask Mr

Mill how, on his own principles, he can maintain that one of them will be able to encroach on the other, if the

Mr Mill tells us that, if a government be composed of the three simple forms, which he will not admit the

British constitution to be, two of the component parts will inevitably join against the third. Now, if two of

them combine and act as one, this case evidently resolves itself into the last: and all the observations which

we have just made will fully apply to it. Mr Mill says, that "any two of the parties, by combining, may

swallow up the third;" and afterwards asks, "How is it possible to prevent two of them from combining to

swallow up the third?" Surely Mr Mill must be aware that in politics two is not always the double of one. If

the concurrence of all the three branches of the legislature be necessary to every law, each branch will

possess constitutional power sufficient to protect it against anything but that physical force from which no

form of government is secure. Mr Mill reminds us of the Irishman, who could not be brought to understand

But is it certain that two of the branches of the legislature will combine against the third? "It appears to be as

certain," says Mr Mill, "as anything which depends upon human will; because there are strong motives in

favour of it, and none that can be conceived in opposition to it." He subsequently sets forth what these

motives are. The interest of the democracy is that each individual should receive protection. The interest of

the King and the aristocracy is to have all the power that they can obtain, and to use it for their own ends.

Therefore the King and the aristocracy have all possible motives for combining against the people. If our

readers will look back to the passage quoted above, they will see that we represent Mr Mill's argument quite

Now we should have thought that, without the help of either history or experience, Mr Mill would have

discovered, by the light of his own logic, the fallacy which lurks, and indeed scarcely lurks, under this

pretended demonstration. The interest of the King may be opposed to that of the people. But is it identical

with that of the aristocracy? In the very page which contains this argument, intended to prove that the King

and the aristocracy will coalesce against the people, Mr Mill attempts to show that there is so strong an

opposition of interest between the King and the aristocracy that if the powers of government are divided

between them the one will inevitably usurp the power of the other. If so, he is not entitled to conclude that

they will combine to destroy the power of the people merely because their interests may be at variance with

those of the people. He is bound to show, not merely that in all communities the interest of a king must be

opposed to that of the people, but also that, in all communities, it must be more directly opposed to the

interest of the people than to the interest of the aristocracy. But he has not shown this. Therefore he has not

proved his proposition on his own principles. To quote history would be a mere waste of time. Every

schoolboy, whose studies have gone so far as the Abridgments of Goldsmith, can mention instances in which

sovereigns have allied themselves with the people against the aristocracy, and in which the nobles have allied

themselves with the people against the sovereign. In general, when there are three parties, every one of which

has much to fear from the others, it is not found that two of them combine to plunder the third. If such a

combination be formed, it scarcely ever effects its purpose. It soon becomes evident which member of the

coalition is likely to be the greater gainer by the transaction. He becomes an object of jealousy to his ally,

who, in all probability, changes sides, and compels him to restore what he has taken. Everybody knows how

Henry VIII. trimmed between Francis and the Emperor Charles. But it is idle to cite examples of the

operation of a principle which is illustrated in almost every page of history, ancient or modern, and to which

almost every state in Europe has, at one time or another, been indebted for its independence.

Mr Mill has now, as he conceives, demonstrated that the simple forms of government are bad, and that the

mixed forms cannot possibly exist. There is still, however, it seems, a hope for mankind.

"In the grand discovery of modern times, the system of representation, the solution of all the difficulties, both

speculative and practical, will perhaps be found. If it cannot, we seem to be forced upon the extraordinary

conclusion, that good government is impossible. For, as there is no individual or combination of individuals,

except the community itself, who would not have an interest in bad government if intrusted with its powers,

and as the community itself is incapable of exercising those powers, and must intrust them to certain

individuals, the conclusion is obvious: the community itself must check those individuals; else they will

follow their interest, and produce bad government. But how is it the community can check? The community

can act only when assembled; and when assembled, it is incapable of acting. The community, however, can

The next question isHow must the representative body be constituted? Mr Mill lays down two principles,

"First, The checking body must have a degree of power sufficient for the business of checking."

"Secondly, It must have an identity of interest with the community. Otherwise, it will make a mischievous

The first of these propositions certainly admits of no dispute. As to the second, we shall hereafter take

occasion to make some remarks on the sense in which Mr Mill understands the words "interest of the

It does not appear very easy, on Mr Mill's principles, to find out any mode of making the interest of the

representative body identical with that of the constituent body. The plan proposed by Mr Mill is simply that

of very frequent election. "As it appears," says he, "that limiting the duration of their power is a security

against the sinister interest of the people's representatives, so it appears that it is the only security of which

the nature of the case admits." But all the arguments by which Mr Mill has proved monarchy and aristocracy

to be pernicious will, as it appears to us, equally prove this security to be no security at all. Is it not clear that

the representatives, as soon as they are elected, are an aristocracy, with an interest opposed to the interest of

the community? Why should they not pass a law for extending the term of their power from one year to ten

years, or declare themselves senators for life? If the whole legislative power is given to them, they will be

constitutionally competent to do this. If part of the legislative power is withheld from them, to whom is that

part given? Is the people to retain it, and to express its assent or dissent in primary assemblies? Mr Mill

himself tells us that the community can only act when assembled, and that, when assembled, it is incapable of

acting. Or is it to be provided, as in some of the American republics, that no change in the fundamental laws

shall be made without the consent of a convention, specially elected for the purpose? Still the difficulty

recurs: Why may not the members of the convention betray their trust, as well as the members of the ordinary

legislature? When private men, they may have been zealous for the interests of the community. When

candidates, they may have pledged themselves to the cause of the constitution. But, as soon as they are a

convention, as soon as they are separated from the people, as soon as the supreme power is put into their

hands, commences that interest opposite to the interest of the community which must, according to Mr Mill,

produce measures opposite to the interests of the community. We must find some other means, therefore, of

checking this check upon a check; some other prop to carry the tortoise, that carries the elephant, that carries

We know well that there is no real danger in such a case. But there is no danger only because there is no truth

in Mr Mill's principles. If men were what he represents them to be, the letter of the very constitution which he

recommends would afford no safeguard against bad government. The real security is this, that legislators will

be deterred by the fear of resistance and of infamy from acting in the manner which we have described. But

restraints, exactly the same in kind, and differing only in degree, exist in all forms of government. That broad

line of distinction which Mr Mill tries to point out between monarchies and aristocracies on the one side, and

democracies on the other, has in fact no existence. In no form of government is there an absolute identity of

interest between the people and their rulers. In every form of government, the rulers stand in some awe of the

people. The fear of resistance and the sense of shame operate in a certain degree, on the most absolute kings

and the most illiberal oligarchies. And nothing but the fear of resistance and the sense of shame preserves the

freedom of the most democratic communities from the encroachments of their annual and biennial delegates.

We have seen how Mr Mill proposes to render the interest of the representative body identical with that of the

constituent body. The next question is, in what manner the interest of the constituent body is to be rendered

identical with that of the community. Mr Mill shows that a minority of the community, consisting even of

many thousands, would be a bad constituent body, and, indeed, merely a numerous aristocracy.

"The benefits of the representative system," says he, "are lost in all cases in which the interests of the

choosing body are not the same with those of the community. It is very evident, that if the community itself

were the choosing body, the interests of the community and that of the choosing body would be the same."

On these grounds Mr Mill recommends that all males of mature age, rich and poor, educated and ignorant,

shall have votes. But why not the women too? This question has often been asked in parliamentary debate,

and has never, to our knowledge, received a plausible answer. Mr Mill escapes from it as fast as he can. But

we shall take the liberty to dwell a little on the words of the oracle. "One thing," says he, "is pretty clear, that

all those individuals whose interests are involved in those of other individuals, may be struck off without

inconvenience...In this light women may be regarded, the interest of almost all of whom is involved either in

If we were to content ourselves with saying, in answer to all the arguments in Mr Mill's essay, that the

interest of a king is involved in that of the community, we should be accused, and justly, of talking nonsense.

Yet such an assertion would not, as far as we can perceive, be more unreasonable than that which Mr Mill has

here ventured to make. Without adducing one fact, without taking the trouble to perplex the question by one

sophism, he placidly dogmatises away the interest of one half of the human race. If there be a word of truth in

history, women have always been, and still are, over the greater part of the globe, humble companions, play

things, captives, menials, beasts of burden. Except in a few happy and highly civilised communities, they are

strictly in a state of personal slavery. Even in those countries where they are best treated, the laws are

generally unfavourable to them, with respect to almost all the points in which they are most deeply interested.

Mr Mill is not legislating for England or the United States, but for mankind. Is then the interest of a Turk the

same with that of the girls who compose his harem? Is the interest of a Chinese the same with that of the

woman whom he harnesses to his plough? Is the interest of an Italian the same with that of the daughter

whom he devotes to God? The interest of a respectable Englishman may be said, without any impropriety, to

be identical with that of his wife. But why is it so? Because human nature is NOT what Mr Mill conceives it

to be; because civilised men, pursuing their own happiness in a social state, are not Yahoos fighting for

carrion; because there is a pleasure in being loved and esteemed, as well as in being feared and servilely

obeyed. Why does not a gentleman restrict his wife to the bare maintenance which the law would compel him

to allow her, that he may have more to spend on his personal pleasures? Because, if he loves her, he has

pleasure in seeing her pleased; and because, even if he dislikes her, he is unwilling that the whole

neighbourhood should cry shame on his meanness and illnature. Why does not the legislature, altogether

composed of males, pass a law to deprive women of all civil privileges whatever, and reduce them to the state

of slaves? By passing such a law, they would gratify what Mr Mill tells us is an inseparable part of human

nature, the desire to possess unlimited power of inflicting pain upon others. That they do not pass such a law,

though they have the power to pass it, and that no man in England wishes to see such a law passed, proves

that the desire to possess unlimited power of inflicting pain is not inseparable from human nature.

If there be in this country an identity of interest between the two sexes, it cannot possibly arise from anything

but the pleasure of being loved, and of communicating happiness. For, that it does not spring from the mere

instinct of sex, the treatment which women experience over the greater part of the world abundantly proves.

And, if it be said that our laws of marriage have produced it, this only removes the argument a step further;

for those laws have been made by males. Now, if the kind feelings of one half of the species be a sufficient

security for the happiness of the other, why may not the kind feelings of a monarch or an aristocracy be

sufficient at least to prevent them from grinding the people to the very utmost of their power?

If Mr Mill will examine why it is that women are better treated in England than in Persia, he may perhaps

find out, in the course of his inquiries, why it is that the Danes are better governed than the subjects of

We now come to the most important practical question in the whole essay. Is it desirable that all males

arrived at years of discretion should vote for representatives, or should a pecuniary qualification be required?

Mr Mill's opinion is, that the lower the qualification the better; and that the best system is that in which there

"The qualification," says he, "must either be such as to embrace the majority of the population, or something

less than the majority. Suppose, in the first place, that it embraces the majority, the question is, whether the

majority would have an interest in oppressing those who, upon this supposition, would be deprived of

political power? If we reduce the calculation to its elements, we shall see that the interest which they would

have of this deplorable kind, though it would be something, would not be very great. Each man of the

majority, if the majority were constituted the governing body, would have something less than the benefit of

oppressing a single man. If the majority were twice as great as the minority, each man of the majority would

only have one half the benefit of oppressing a single man...Suppose in the second place, that the qualification

did not admit a body of electors so large as the majority, in that case, taking again the calculation in its

elements, we shall see that each man would have a benefit equal to that derived from the oppression of more

than one man; and that, in proportion as the elective body constituted a smaller and smaller minority, the

benefit of misrule to the elective body would be increased, and bad government would be insured."

The first remark which we have to make on this argument is, that, by Mr Mill's own account, even a

government in which every human being should vote would still be defective. For, under a system of

universal suffrage, the majority of the electors return the representative, and the majority of the

representatives make the law. The whole people may vote, therefore; but only the majority govern. So that,

by Mr Mill's own confession, the most perfect system of government conceivable is one in which the interest

But is Mr Mill in the right when he says that such an interest could not be very great? We think not. If,

indeed, every man in the community possessed an equal share of what Mr Mill calls the objects of desire, the

majority would probably abstain from plundering the minority. A large minority would offer a vigorous

resistance; and the property of a small minority would not repay the other members of the community for the

trouble of dividing it. But it happens that in all civilised communities there is a small minority of rich men,

and a great majority of poor men. If there were a thousand men with ten pounds apiece, it would not be worth

while for nine hundred and ninety of them to rob ten, and it would be a bold attempt for six hundred of them

to rob four hundred. But, if ten of them had a hundred thousand pounds apiece, the case would be very

"That one human being will desire to render the person and property of another subservient to his pleasures,

notwithstanding the pain or loss of pleasure which it may occasion to that other individual, is," according to

Mr Mill, "the foundation of government." That the property of the rich minority can be made subservient to

the pleasures of the poor majority will scarcely be denied. But Mr Mill proposes to give the poor majority

power over the rich minority. Is it possible to doubt to what, on his own principles, such an arrangement must

It may perhaps be said that, in the long run, it is for the interest of the people that property should be secure,

and that therefore they will respect it. We answer thus:It cannot be pretended that it is not for the

immediate interest of the people to plunder the rich. Therefore, even if it were quite certain that, in the long

run, the people would, as a body, lose by doing so, it would not necessarily follow that the fear of remote ill

consequences would overcome the desire of immediate acquisitions. Every individual might flatter himself

that the punishment would not fall on him. Mr Mill himself tells us, in his Essay on Jurisprudence, that no

But we are rather inclined to think that it would, on the whole, be for the interest of the majority to plunder

the rich. If so, the Utilitarians will say, that the rich OUGHT to be plundered. We deny the inference. For, in

the first place, if the object of government be the greatest happiness of the greatest number, the intensity of

the suffering which a measure inflicts must be taken into consideration, as well as the number of the

sufferers. In the next place, we have to notice one most important distinction which Mr Mill has altogether

overlooked. Throughout his essay, he confounds the community with the species. He talks of the greatest

happiness of the greatest number: but, when we examine his reasonings, we find that he thinks only of the

Therefore, even if we were to concede that all those arguments of which we have exposed the fallacy are

unanswerable, we might still deny the conclusion at which the essayist arrives. Even if we were to grant that

he had found out the form of government which is best for the majority of the people now living on the face

of the earth, we might still without inconsistency maintain that form of government to be pernicious to

mankind. It would still be incumbent on Mr Mill to prove that the interest of every generation is identical

with the interest of all succeeding generations. And how on his own principles he could do this we are at a

The case, indeed, is strictly analogous to that of an aristocratic government. In an aristocracy, says Mr Mill,

the few being invested with the powers of government, can take the objects of their desires from the people.

In the same manner, every generation in turn can gratify itself at the expense of posterity,priority of time,

in the latter case, giving an advantage exactly corresponding to that which superiority of station gives in the

former. That an aristocracy will abuse its advantage, is, according to Mr Mill, matter of demonstration. Is it

not equally certain that the whole people will do the same: that, if they have the power, they will commit

waste of every sort on the estate of mankind, and transmit it to posterity impoverished and desolated?

How is it possible for any person who holds the doctrines of Mr Mill to doubt that the rich, in a democracy

such as that which he recommends, would be pillaged as unmercifully as under a Turkish Pacha? It is no

doubt for the interest of the next generation, and it may be for the remote interest of the present generation,

that property should be held sacred. And so no doubt it will be for the interest of the next Pacha, and even for

that of the present Pacha, if he should hold office long, that the inhabitants of his Pachalik should be

encouraged to accumulate wealth. Scarcely any despotic sovereign has plundered his subjects to a large

extent without having reason before the end of his reign to regret it. Everybody knows how bitterly Louis the

Fourteenth, towards the close of his life, lamented his former extravagance. If that magnificent prince had not

expended millions on Marli and Versailles, and tens of millions on the aggrandisement of his grandson, he

would not have been compelled at last to pay servile court to lowborn moneylenders, to humble himself

before men on whom, in the days of his pride, he would not have vouchsafed to look, for the means of

supporting even his own household. Examples to the same effect might easily be multiplied. But despots, we

see, do plunder their subjects, though history and experience tell them that, by prematurely exacting the

means of profusion, they are in fact devouring the seedcorn from which the future harvest of revenue is to

spring. Why then should we suppose that the people will be deterred from procuring immediate relief and

enjoyment by the fear of distant calamities, of calamities which perhaps may not be fully felt till the times of

These conclusions are strictly drawn from Mr Mill's own principles: and, unlike most of the conclusions

which he has himself drawn from those principles, they are not as far as we know contradicted by facts. The

case of the United States is not in point. In a country where the necessaries of life are cheap and the wages of

labour high, where a man who has no capital but his legs and arms may expect to become rich by industry

and frugality, it is not very decidedly even for the immediate advantage of the poor to plunder the rich; and

the punishment of doing so would very speedily follow the offence. But in countries in which the great

majority live from hand to mouth, and in which vast masses of wealth have been accumulated by a

comparatively small number, the case is widely different. The immediate want is, at particular seasons,

craving, imperious, irresistible. In our own time it has steeled men to the fear of the gallows, and urged them

on the point of the bayonet. And, if these men had at their command that gallows and those bayonets which

now scarcely restrain them, what is to be expected? Nor is this state of things one which can exist only under

a bad government. If there be the least truth in the doctrines of the school to which Mr Mill belongs, the

increase of population will necessarily produce it everywhere. The increase of population is accelerated by

good and cheap government. Therefore, the better the government, the greater is the inequality of conditions:

and the greater the inequality of conditions, the stronger are the motives which impel the populace to

It is scarcely necessary to discuss the effects which a general spoliation of the rich would produce. It may

indeed happen that, where a legal and political system full of abuses is inseparably bound up with the

institution of property, a nation may gain by a single convulsion, in which both perish together. The price is

fearful. But if, when the shock is over, a new order of things should arise under which property may enjoy

security, the industry of individuals will soon repair the devastation. Thus we entertain no doubt that the

Revolution was, on the whole, a most salutary event for France. But would France have gained if, ever since

the year 1793, she had been governed by a democratic convention? If Mr Mill's principles be sound, we say

that almost her whole capital would by this time have been annihilated. As soon as the first explosion was

beginning to be forgotten, as soon as wealth again began to germinate, as soon as the poor again began to

compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and banquets of the rich, there would have been another

scramble for property, another maximum, another general confiscation, another reign of terror. Four or five

such convulsions following each other, at intervals of ten or twelve years, would reduce the most flourishing

The civilised part of the world has now nothing to fear from the hostility of savage nations. Once the deluge

of barbarism has passed over it, to destroy and to fertilise; and in the present state of mankind we enjoy a full

security against that calamity. That flood will no more return to cover the earth. But is it possible that in the

bosom of civilisation itself may be engendered the malady which shall destroy it? Is it possible that

institutions may be established which, without the help of earthquake, of famine, of pestilence, or of the

foreign sword, may undo the work of so many ages of wisdom and glory, and gradually sweep away taste,

literature, science, commerce, manufactures, everything but the rude arts necessary to the support of animal

life? Is it possible that, in two or three hundred years, a few lean and halfnaked fishermen may divide with

owls and foxes the ruins of the greatest European cities may wash their nets amidst the relics of her

gigantic docks, and build their huts out of the capitals of her stately cathedrals? If the principles of Mr Mill be

sound, we say, without hesitation, that the form of government which he recommends will assuredly produce

all this. But, if these principles be unsound, if the reasonings by which we have opposed them be just, the

higher and middling orders are the natural representatives of the human race. Their interest may be opposed

in some things to that of their poorer contemporaries; but it is identical with that of the innumerable

Mr Mill concludes his essay, by answering an objection often made to the project of universal suffragethat

the people do not understand their own interests. We shall not go through his arguments on this subject,

because, till he has proved that it is for the interest of the people to respect property, he only makes matters

worse by proving that they understand their interests. But we cannot refrain from treating our readers with a

"The opinions of that class of the people who are below the middle rank are formed, and their minds are

directed, by that intelligent, that virtuous rank, who come the most immediately in contact with them, who

are in the constant habit of intimate communication with them, to whom they fly for advice and assistance in

all their numerous difficulties, upon whom they feel an immediate and daily dependence in health and in

sickness, in infancy and in old age, to whom their children look up as models for their imitation, whose

opinions they hear daily repeated, and account it their honour to adopt. There can be no doubt that the middle

rank, which gives to science, to art, and to legislation itself their most distinguished ornaments, and is the

chief source of all that has exalted and refined human nature, is that portion of the community, of which, if

the basis of representation were ever so far extended, the opinion would ultimately decide. Of the people

beneath them, a vast majority would be sure to be guided by their advice and example."

This single paragraph is sufficient to upset Mr Mill's theory. Will the people act against their own interest? Or

will the middle rank act against its own interest? Or is the interest of the middle rank identical with the

interest of the people? If the people act according to the directions of the middle rank, as Mr Mill says that

they assuredly will, one of these three questions must be answered in the affirmative. But, if any one of the

three be answered in the affirmative, his whole system falls to the ground. If the interest of the middle rank be

identical with that of the people, why should not the powers of government be intrusted to that rank? If the

powers of government were intrusted to that rank, there would evidently be an aristocracy of wealth; and "to

constitute an aristocracy of wealth, though it were a very numerous one, would," according to Mr Mill, "leave

the community without protection, and exposed to all the evils of unbridled power." Will not the same

motives which induce the middle classes to abuse one kind of power induce them to abuse another? If their

interest be the same with that of the people they will govern the people well. If it be opposite to that of the

people they will advise the people ill. The system of universal suffrage, therefore, according to Mr Mill's own

account, is only a device for doing circuitously what a representative system, with a pretty high qualification,

So ends this celebrated Essay. And such is this philosophy for which the experience of three thousand years is

to be discarded; this philosophy, the professors of which speak as if it had guided the world to the knowledge

of navigation and alphabetical writing; as if, before its dawn, the inhabitants of Europe had lived in caverns

and eaten each other! We are sick, it seems, like the children of Israel, of the objects of our old and legitimate

worship. We pine for a new idolatry. All that is costly and all that is ornamental in our intellectual treasures

Our readers can scarcely mistake our object in writing this article. They will not suspect us of any disposition

to advocate the cause of absolute monarchy, or of any narrow form of oligarchy, or to exaggerate the evils of

popular government. Our object at present is, not so much to attack or defend any particular system of polity,

as to expose the vices of a kind of reasoning utterly unfit for moral and political discussions; of a kind of

reasoning which may so readily be turned to purposes of falsehood that it ought to receive no quarter, even

Our objection to the essay of Mr Mill is fundamental. We believe that it is utterly impossible to deduce the

What proposition is there respecting human nature which is absolutely and universally true? We know of

only one: and that is not only true, but identical; that men always act from self interest. This truism the

Utilitarians proclaim with as much pride as if it were new, and as much zeal as if it were important. But in

fact, when explained, it means only that men, if they can, will do as they choose. When we see the actions of

a man we know with certainty what he thinks his interest to be. But it is impossible to reason with certainty

from what WE take to be his interest to his actions. One man goes without a dinner that he may add a shilling

to a hundred thousand pounds: another runs in debt to give balls and masquerades. One man cuts his father's

throat to get possession of his old clothes: another hazards his own life to save that of an enemy. One man

volunteers on a forlorn hope: another is drummed out of a regiment for cowardice. Each of these men has, no

doubt, acted from selfinterest. But we gain nothing by knowing this, except the pleasure, if it be one, of

multiplying useless words. In fact, this principle is just as recondite and just as important as the great truth

that whatever is, is. If a philosopher were always to state facts in the following form"There is a shower:

but whatever is, is; therefore, there is a shower,"his reasoning would be perfectly sound; but we do not

apprehend that it would materially enlarge the circle of human knowledge. And it is equally idle to attribute

any importance to a proposition, which, when interpreted means only that a man had rather do what he had

If the doctrine, that men always act from selfinterest, be laid down in any other sense than thisif the

meaning of the word selfinterest be narrowed so as to exclude any one of the motives which may by

possibility act on any human being, the proposition ceases to be identical: but at the same time it ceases to be

What we have said of the word "selfinterest" applies to all the synonymes and circumlocutions which are

employed to convey the same meaning; pain and pleasure, happiness and misery, objects of desire, and so

The whole art of Mr Mill's essay consists in one simple trick of legerdemain. It consists in using words of the

sort which we have been describing first in one sense and then in another. Men will take the objects of their

desire if they can. Unquestionably:but this is an identical proposition: for an object of desire means merely

a thing which a man will procure if he can. Nothing can possibly be inferred from a maxim of this kind.

When we see a man take something we shall know that it was an object of his desire. But till then we have no

means of judging with certainty what he desires or what he will take. The general proposition, however,

having been admitted, Mr Mill proceeds to reason as if men had no desires but those which can be gratified

only by spoliation and oppression. It then becomes easy to deduce doctrines of vast importance from the

original axiom. The only misfortune is, that by thus narrowing the meaning of the word desire the axiom

When we pass beyond those maxims which it is impossible to deny without a contradiction in terms, and

which, therefore, do not enable us to advance a single step in practical knowledge, we do not believe that it is

possible to lay down a single general rule respecting the motives which influence human actions. There is

nothing which may not, by association or by comparison, become an object either of desire or of aversion.

The fear of death is generally considered as one of the strongest of our feelings. It is the most formidable

sanction which legislators have been able to devise. Yet it is notorious that, as Lord Bacon has observed,

there is no passion by which that fear has not been often overcome. Physical pain is indisputably an evil; yet

it has been often endured and even welcomed. Innumerable martyrs have exulted in torments which made the

spectators shudder: and to use a more homely illustration, there are few wives who do not long to be mothers.

Is the love of approbation a stronger motive than the love of wealth? It is impossible to answer this question

generally even in the case of an individual with whom we are very intimate. We often say, indeed, that a man

loves fame more than money, or money more than fame. But this is said in a loose and popular sense; for

there is scarcely a man who would not endure a few sneers for a great sum of money, if he were in pecuniary

distress; and scarcely a man, on the other hand, who, if he were in flourishing circumstances, would expose

himself to the hatred and contempt of the public for a trifle. In order, therefore, to return a precise answer

even about a single human being, we must know what is the amount of the sacrifice of reputation demanded

and of the pecuniary advantage offered, and in what situation the person to whom the temptation is proposed

stands at the time. But, when the question is propounded generally about the whole species, the impossibility

of answering is still more evident. Man differs from man; generation from generation; nation from nation.

Education, station, sex, age, accidental associations, produce infinite shades of variety.

Now, the only mode in which we can conceive it possible to deduce a theory of government from the

principles of human nature is this. We must find out what are the motives which, in a particular form of

government, impel rulers to bad measures, and what are those which impel them to good measures. We must

then compare the effect of the two classes of motives; and according as we find the one or the other to

Now let it be supposed that, in aristocratical and monarchical states, the desire of wealth and other desires of

the same class always tend to produce misgovernment, and that the love of approbation and other kindred

feelings always tend to produce good government. Then, if it be impossible, as we have shown that it is, to

pronounce generally which of the two classes of motives is the more influential, it is impossible to find out, a

priori, whether a monarchical or aristocratical form of government be good or bad.

Mr Mill has avoided the difficulty of making the comparison, by very coolly putting all the weights into one

of the scales,by reasoning as if no human being had ever sympathised with the feelings, been gratified by

The case, as we have put it, is decisive against Mr Mill, and yet we have put it in a manner far too favourable

to him. For, in fact, it is impossible to lay it down as a general rule that the love of wealth in a sovereign

always produces misgovernment, or the love of approbation good government. A patient and far sighted

ruler, for example, who is less desirous of raising a great sum immediately than of securing an unencumbered

and progressive revenue, will, by taking off restraints from trade and giving perfect security to property,

encourage accumulation and entice capital from foreign countries. The commercial policy of Prussia, which

is perhaps superior to that of any country in the world, and which puts to shame the absurdities of our

republican brethren on the other side of the Atlantic, has probably sprung from the desire of an absolute ruler

to enrich himself. On the other hand, when the popular estimate of virtues and vices is erroneous, which is

too often the case, the love of approbation leads sovereigns to spend the wealth of the nation on useless

shows, or to engage in wanton and destructive wars. If then we can neither compare the strength of two

motives, nor determine with certainty to what description of actions either motive will lead, how can we

How, then, are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so important to the happiness of mankind? Surely

by that method which, in every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally increased the

power and knowledge of our species,by that method for which our new philosophers would substitute

quibbles scarcely worthy of the barbarous respondents and opponents of the middle ages,by the method of

Induction; by observing the present state of the world,by assiduously studying the history of past

ages,by sifting the evidence of facts,by carefully combining and contrasting those which are

authentic,by generalising with judgment and diffidence,by perpetually bringing the theory which we

have constructed to the test of new facts,by correcting, or altogether abandoning it, according as those new

facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound. Proceeding thus,patiently,diligently,

candidly,we may hope to form a system as far inferior in pretension to that which we have been

examining and as far superior to it in real utility as the prescriptions of a great physician, varying with every

stage of every malady and with the constitution of every patient, to the pill of the advertising quack which is

This is that noble Science of Politics, which is equally removed from the barren theories of the Utilitarian

sophists, and from the petty craft, so often mistaken for statesmanship by minds grown narrow in habits of

intrigue, jobbing, and official etiquette;which of all sciences is the most important to the welfare of

nations,which of all sciences most tends to expand and invigorate the mind,which draws nutriment and

ornament from every part of philosophy and literature, and dispenses in return nutriment and ornament to all.

We are sorry and surprised when we see men of good intentions and good natural abilities abandon this

healthful and generous study to pore over speculations like those which we have been examining. And we

should heartily rejoice to find that our remarks had induced any person of this description to employ, in

researches of real utility, the talents and industry which are now wasted on verbal sophisms, wretched of their

As to the greater part of the sect, it is, we apprehend, of little consequence what they study or under whom. It

would be more amusing, to be sure, and more reputable, if they would take up the old republican cant and

declaim about Brutus and Timoleon, the duty of killing tyrants and the blessedness of dying for liberty. But,

on the whole, they might have chosen worse. They may as well be Utilitarians as jockeys or dandies. And,

though quibbling about selfinterest and motives, and objects of desire, and the greatest happiness of the

greatest number, is but a poor employment for a grown man, it certainly hurts the health less than hard

drinking, and the fortune less than high play; it is not much more laughable than phrenology, and is

"Westminster Review" Number XXI., Article XVI. "Edinburgh Review" Number XCVII., Article on Mill's

We have had great reason, we think, to be gratified by the success of our late attack on the Utilitarians. We

could publish a long list of the cures which it has wrought in cases previously considered as hopeless.

Delicacy forbids us to divulge names; but we cannot refrain from alluding to two remarkable instances. A

respectable lady writes to inform us that her son, who was plucked at Cambridge last January, has not been

heard to call Sir James Mackintosh a poor ignorant fool more than twice since the appearance of our article.

A distinguished political writer in the Westminster and Parliamentary Reviews has borrowed Hume's History,

and has actually got as far as the battle of Agincourt. He assures us that he takes great pleasure in his new

study, and that he is very impatient to learn how Scotland and England became one kingdom. But the greatest

compliment that we have received is that Mr Bentham himself should have condescended to take the field in

defence of Mr Mill. We have not been in the habit of reviewing reviews: but, as Mr Bentham is a truly great

man, and as his party have thought fit to announce in puffs and placards that this article is written by him, and

contains not only an answer to our attacks, but a development of the "greatest happiness principle," with the

latest improvements of the author, we shall for once depart from our general rule. However the conflict may

Of Mr Bentham himself we shall endeavour, even while defending ourselves against his reproaches, to speak

with the respect to which his venerable age, his genius, and his public services entitle him. If any harsh

expression should escape us, we trust that he will attribute it to inadvertence, to the momentary warmth of

controversy,to anything, in short, rather than to a design of affronting him. Though we have nothing in

common with the crew of Hurds and Boswells, who, either from interested motives, or from the habit of

intellectual servility and dependence, pamper and vitiate his appetite with the noxious sweetness of their

undiscerning praise, we are not perhaps less competent than they to appreciate his merit, or less sincerely

disposed to acknowledge it. Though we may sometimes think his reasonings on moral and political questions

feeble and sophisticalthough we may sometimes smile at his extraordinary languagewe can never be

weary of admiring the amplitude of his comprehension, the keenness of his penetration, the exuberant fertility

with which his mind pours forth arguments and illustrations. However sharply he may speak of us, we can

never cease to revere in him the father of the philosophy of Jurisprudence. He has a full right to all the

privileges of a great inventor: and, in our court of criticism, those privileges will never be pleaded in vain.

But they are limited in the same manner in which, fortunately for the ends of justice, the privileges of the

peerage are now limited. The advantage is personal and incommunicable. A nobleman can now no longer

cover with his protection every lackey who follows his heels, or every bully who draws in his quarrel: and,

highly as we respect the exalted rank which Mr Bentham holds among the writers of our time, yet when, for

the due maintenance of literary police, we shall think it necessary to confute sophists, or to bring pretenders

to shame, we shall not depart from the ordinary course of our proceedings because the offenders call

Whether Mr Mill has much reason to thank Mr Bentham for undertaking his defence, our readers, when they

have finished this article, will perhaps be inclined to doubt. Great as Mr Bentham's talents are, he has, we

think, shown an undue confidence in them. He should have considered how dangerous it is for any man,

however eloquent and ingenious he may be, to attack or defend a book without reading it: and we feel quite

convinced that Mr Bentham would never have written the article before us if he had, before he began,

He has utterly mistaken our object and meaning. He seems to think that we have undertaken to set up some

theory of government in opposition to that of Mr Mill. But we distinctly disclaimed any such design. From

the beginning to the end of our article, there is not, as far as we remember, a single sentence which, when

fairly construed, can be considered as indicating any such design. If such an expression can be found, it has

been dropped by inadvertence. Our object was to prove, not that monarchy and aristocracy are good, but that

Mr Mill had not proved them to be bad; not that democracy is bad, but that Mr Mill had not proved it to be

good. The points in issue are these: whether the famous Essay on Government be, as it has been called, a

perfect solution of the great political problem, or a series of sophisms and blunders; and whether the sect

which, while it glories in the precision of its logic, extols this Essay as a masterpiece of demonstration be a

sect deserving of the respect or of the derision of mankind. These, we say, are the issues; and on these we

It is not necessary, for the purposes of this investigation, that we should state what our political creed is, or

whether we have any political creed at all. A man who cannot act the most trivial part in a farce has a right to

hiss Romeo Coates: a man who does not know a vein from an artery may caution a simple neighbour against

the advertisements of Dr Eady. A complete theory of government would indeed be a noble present to

mankind; but it is a present which we do not hope and do not pretend that we can offer. If, however, we

cannot lay the foundation, it is something to clear away the rubbish; if we cannot set up truth, it is something

to pull down error. Even if the subjects of which the Utilitarians treat were subjects of less fearful

importance, we should think it no small service to the cause of good sense and good taste to point out the

contrast between their magnificent pretensions and their miserable performances. Some of them have,

however, thought fit to display their ingenuity on questions of the most momentous kind, and on questions

concerning which men cannot reason ill with impunity. We think it, under these circumstances, an absolute

duty to expose the fallacy of their arguments. It is no matter of pride or of pleasure. To read their works is the

most soporific employment that we know; and a man ought no more to be proud of refuting them than of

having two legs. We must now come to close quarters with Mr Bentham, whom, we need not say, we do not

"First, 'That it is not true that all despots govern ill;' whereon the world is in a mistake, and the Whigs have

the true light. And for proof, principally,that the King of Denmark is not Caligula. To which the answer is,

that the King of Denmark is not a despot. He was put in his present situation by the people turning the scale

in his favour in a balanced contest between himself and the nobility. And it is quite clear that the same power

would turn the scale the other way the moment a King of Denmark should take into his head to be Caligula. It

is of little consequence by what congeries of letters the Majesty of Denmark is typified in the royal press of

Copenhagen, while the real fact is that the sword of the people is suspended over his head, in case of

illbehaviour, as effectually as in other countries where more noise is made upon the subject. Everybody

believes the sovereign of Denmark to be a good and virtuous gentleman; but there is no more superhuman

merit in his being so than in the case of a rural squire who does not shoot his land steward or quarter his

"It is true that there are partial exceptions to the rule, that all men use power as badly as they dare. There may

have been such things as amiable negrodrivers and sentimental masters of pressgangs; and here and there,

among the odd freaks of human nature, there may have been specimens of men who were 'No tyrants, though

bred up to tyranny.' But it would be as wise to recommend wolves for nurses at the Foundling on the credit of

Romulus and Remus as to substitute the exception for the general fact, and advise mankind to take to trusting

Now, in the first place, we never cited the case of Denmark to prove that all despots do not govern ill. We

cited it to prove that Mr Mill did not know how to reason. Mr Mill gave it as a reason for deducing the theory

of government from the general laws of human nature that the King of Denmark was not Caligula. This we

In the second place, it was not we, but Mr Mill, who said that the King of Denmark was a despot. His words

are these:"The people of Denmark, tired out with the oppression of an aristocracy, resolved that their king

should be absolute; and under their absolute monarch are as well governed as any people in Europe." We

leave Mr Bentham to settle with Mr Mill the distinction between a despot and an absolute king.

In the third place, Mr Bentham says that there was in Denmark a balanced contest between the king and the

nobility. We find some difficulty in believing that Mr Bentham seriously means to say this, when we consider

that Mr Mill has demonstrated the chance to be as infinity to one against the existence of such a balanced

Fourthly, Mr Bentham says that in this balanced contest the people turned the scale in favour of the king

against the aristocracy. But Mr Mill has demonstrated that it cannot possibly be for the interest of the

monarchy and democracy to join against the aristocracy; and that wherever the three parties exist, the king

and the aristocracy will combine against the people. This, Mr Mill assures us, is as certain as anything which

Fifthly, Mr Bentham says that, if the King of Denmark were to oppress his people, the people and nobles

would combine against the king. But Mr Mill has proved that it can never be for the interest of the aristocracy

to combine with the democracy against the king. It is evidently Mr Bentham's opinion, that "monarchy,

aristocracy, and democracy may balance each other, and by mutual checks produce good government." But

this is the very theory which Mr Mill pronounces to be the wildest, the most visionary, the most chimerical

We have no dispute on these heads with Mr Bentham. On the contrary, we think his explanation trueor at

least, true in part; and we heartily thank him for lending us his assistance to demolish the essay of his

follower. His wit and his sarcasm are sport to us; but they are death to his unhappy disciple.

Mr Bentham seems to imagine that we have said something implying an opinion favourable to despotism. We

can scarcely suppose that, as he has not condescended to read that portion of our work which he undertook to

answer, he can have bestowed much attention on its general character. Had he done so he would, we think,

scarcely have entertained such a suspicion. Mr Mill asserts, and pretends to prove, that under no despotic

government does any human being, except the tools of the sovereign, possess more than the necessaries of

life, and that the most intense degree of terror is kept up by constant cruelty. This, we say, is untrue. It is not

merely a rule to which there are exceptions: but it is not the rule. Despotism is bad; but it is scarcely

anywhere so bad as Mr Mill says that it is everywhere. This we are sure Mr Bentham will allow. If a man

were to say that five hundred thousand people die every year in London of dramdrinking, he would not

assert a proposition more monstrously false than Mr Mill's. Would it be just to charge us with defending

We say with Mr Bentham that despotism is a bad thing. We say with Mr Bentham that the exceptions do not

destroy the authority of the rule. But this we saythat a single exception overthrows an argument which

either does not prove the rule at all, or else proves the rule to be TRUE WITHOUT EXCEPTIONS; and such

an argument is Mr Mill's argument against despotism. In this respect there is a great difference between rules

drawn from experience and rules deduced a priori. We might believe that there had been a fall of snow last

August, and yet not think it likely that there would be snow next August. A single occurrence opposed to our

general experience would tell for very little in our calculation of the chances. But, if we could once satisfy

ourselves that in ANY single rightangled triangle the square of the hypothenuse might be less than the

squares of the sides, we must reject the fortyseventh proposition of Euclid altogether. We willingly adopt

Mr Bentham's lively illustration about the wolf; and we will say in passing that it gives us real pleasure to see

how little old age has diminished the gaiety of this eminent man. We can assure him that his merriment gives

us far more pleasure on his account than pain on our own. We say with him, Keep the wolf out of the nursery,

in spite of the story of Romulus and Remus. But, if the shepherd who saw the wolf licking and suckling those

famous twins were, after telling this story to his companions, to assert that it was an infallible rule that no

wolf ever had spared, or ever would spare, any living thing which might fall in its waythat its nature was

carnivorousand that it could not possibly disobey its nature, we think that the hearers might have been

excused for staring. It may be strange, but is not inconsistent, that a wolf which has eaten ninetynine

children should spare the hundredth. But the fact that a wolf has once spared a child is sufficient to show that

there must be some flaw in the chain of reasoning purporting to prove that wolves cannot possibly spare

Mr Bentham proceeds to attack another position which he conceives us to maintain:

"Secondly, That a government not under the control of the community (for there is no question upon any

other) 'MAY SOON BE SATURATED.' Tell it not in Bow Street, whisper it not in Hatton Garden,that

there is a plan for preventing injustice by 'saturation.' With what peals of unearthly merriment would Minos,

Aeacus, and Rhadamanthus be aroused upon their benches, if the 'light wings of saffron and of blue' should

bear this theory into their grim domains! Why do not the owners of pocket handkerchiefs try to 'saturate?'

Why does not the cheated publican beg leave to check the gulosity of his defrauder with a repetatur haustus,

and the pummelled plaintiff neutralise the malice of his adversary, by requesting to have the rest of the

beating in presence of the court,if it is not that such conduct would run counter to all the conclusions of

experience, and be the procreation of the mischief it affected to destroy? Woful is the man whose wealth

depends on his having more than somebody else can be persuaded to take from him; and woful also is the

Now this is certainly very pleasant writing: but there is no great difficulty in answering the argument. The

real reason which makes it absurd to think of preventing theft by pensioning off thieves is this, that there is

no limit to the number of thieves. If there were only a hundred thieves in a place, and we were quite sure that

no person not already addicted to theft would take to it, it might become a question whether to keep the

thieves from dishonesty by raising them above distress would not be a better course than to employ officers

against them. But the actual cases are not parallel. Every man who chooses can become a thief; but a man

cannot become a king or a member of the aristocracy whenever he chooses. The number of the depredators is

limited; and therefore the amount of depredation, so far as physical pleasures are concerned, must be limited

also. Now, we made the remark which Mr Bentham censures with reference to physical pleasures only. The

pleasures of ostentation, of taste, of revenge, and other pleasures of the same description, have, we distinctly

allowed, no limit. Our words are these:"a king or an aristocracy may be supplied to satiety with

CORPORAL PLEASURES, at an expense which the rudest and poorest community would scarcely feel."

Does Mr Bentham deny this? If he does, we leave him to Mr Mill. "What," says that philosopher, in his Essay

on Education, "what are the ordinary pursuits of wealth and power, which kindle to such a height the ardour

of mankind? Not the mere love of eating and of drinking, or all the physical objects together which wealth

can purchase or power command. With these every man is in the long run speedily satisfied." What the

difference is between being speedily satisfied and being soon saturated, we leave Mr Bentham and Mr Mill to

The word "saturation," however, seems to provoke Mr Bentham's mirth. It certainly did not strike us as very

pure English; but, as Mr Mill used it, we supposed it to be good Benthamese. With the latter language we are

not critically acquainted, though, as it has many roots in common with our mother tongue, we can contrive,

by the help of a converted Utilitarian, who attends us in the capacity of Moonshee, to make out a little. But

"Thirdly, That 'though there may be some tastes and propensities that have no point of saturation, there exists

a sufficient check in the desire of the good opinion of others.' The misfortune of this argument is, that no man

cares for the good opinion of those he has been accustomed to wrong, If oysters have opinions, it is probable

they think very ill of those who eat them in August; but small is the effect upon the autumnal glutton that

engulfs their gentle substances within his own. The planter and the slave driver care just as much about

negro opinion, as the epicure about the sentiments of oysters. M. Ude throwing live eels into the fire as a

kindly method of divesting them of the unsavoury oil that lodges beneath their skins, is not more convinced

of the immense aggregate of good which arises to the lordlier parts of the creation, than is the gentle peer who

strips his fellow man of country and of family for a wildfowl slain. The goodly landowner, who lives by

morsels squeezed indiscriminately from the waxy hands of the cobbler and the polluted ones of the nightman,

is in no small degree the object of both hatred and contempt; but it is to be feared that he is a long way from

feeling them to be intolerable. The principle of 'At mihi plaudo ipse domi, simul ac nummos contemplor in

arca,' is sufficient to make a wide interval between the opinions of the plaintiff and defendant in such cases.

In short, to banish law and leave all plaintiffs to trust to the desire of reputation on the opposite side, would

only be transporting the theory of the Whigs from the House of Commons to Westminster Hall."

Now, in the first place, we never maintained the proposition which Mr Bentham puts into our mouths. We

said, and say, that there is a CERTAIN check to the rapacity and cruelty of men, in their desire of the good

opinion of others. We never said that it was sufficient. Let Mr Mill show it to be insufficient. It is enough for

us to prove that there is a setoff against the principle from which Mr Mill deduces the whole theory of

government. The balance may be, and, we believe, will be, against despotism and the narrower forms of

aristocracy. But what is this to the correctness or incorrectness of Mr Mill's accounts? The question is not,

whether the motives which lead rulers to behave ill are stronger than those which lead them to behave

well;but, whether we ought to form a theory of government by looking ONLY at the motives which lead

Absolute rulers, says Mr Bentham, do not care for the good opinion of their subjects; for no man cares for the

good opinion of those whom he has been accustomed to wrong. By Mr Bentham's leave, this is a plain

begging of the question. The point at issue is this:Will kings and nobles wrong the people? The argument

in favour of kings and nobles is this:they will not wrong the people, because they care for the good opinion

of the people. But this argument Mr Bentham meets thus:they will not care for the good opinion of the

Here Mr Mill differs, as usual, from Mr Bentham. "The greatest princes," says he, in his Essay on Education,

"the most despotical masters of human destiny, when asked what they aim at by their wars and conquests,

would answer, if sincere, as Frederick of Prussia answered, pour faire parler de soi;to occupy a large space

in the admiration of mankind." Putting Mr Mill's and Mr Bentham's principles together, we might make out

very easily that "the greatest princes, the most despotical masters of human destiny," would never abuse their

A man who has been long accustomed to injure people must also have been long accustomed to do without

their love, and to endure their aversion. Such a man may not miss the pleasure of popularity; for men seldom

miss a pleasure which they have long denied themselves. An old tyrant does without popularity just as an old

waterdrinker does without wine. But, though it is perfectly true that men who for the good of their health

have long abstained from wine feel the want of it very little, it would be absurd to infer that men will always

abstain from wine when their health requires that they should do so. And it would be equally absurd to say,

because men who have been accustomed to oppress care little for popularity, that men will therefore

Then, again, a man may be accustomed to wrong people in one point and not in another. He may care for

their good opinion with regard to one point and not with regard to another. The Regent Orleans laughed at

charges of impiety, libertinism, extravagance, idleness, disgraceful promotions. But the slightest allusion to

the charge of poisoning threw him into convulsions. Louis the Fifteenth braved the hatred and contempt of

his subjects during many years of the most odious and imbecile misgovernment. But, when a report was

spread that he used human blood for his baths, he was almost driven mad by it. Surely Mr Bentham's position

"that no man cares for the good opinion of those whom he has been accustomed to wrong" would be

objectionable, as far too sweeping and indiscriminate, even if it did not involve, as in the present case we

"Fourthly, The Edinburgh Reviewers are of opinion, that 'it might, with no small plausibility, be maintained,

that in many countries, there are two classes which, in some degree, answer to this description;' [viz.] 'that the

poor compose the class which government is established to restrain; and the people of some property the class

"They take great pains, it is true, to say this and not to say it. They shuffle and creep about, to secure a hole to

escape at, if 'what they do not assert' should be found in any degree inconvenient. A man might waste his life

in trying to find out whether the Misses of the 'Edinburgh' mean to say Yes or No in their political coquetry.

But whichever way the lovely spinsters may decide, it is diametrically opposed to history and the evidence of

facts, that the poor ARE the class whom there is any difficulty in restraining. It is not the poor but the rich

that have a propensity to take the property of other people. There is no instance upon earth of the poor having

combined to take away the property of the rich; and all the instances habitually brought forward in support of

it are gross misrepresentations, founded upon the most necessary acts of selfdefence on the part of the most

numerous classes. Such a misrepresentation is the common one of the Agrarian law; which was nothing but

an attempt on the part of the Roman people to get back some part of what had been taken from them by

undisguised robbery. Such another is the stock example of the French Revolution, appealed to by the

'Edinburgh Review' in the actual case. It is utterly untrue that the French Revolution took place because 'the

poor began to compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and banquets of the rich;' it took place

because they were robbed of their cottages and salads to support the hotels and banquets of their oppressors.

It is utterly untrue that there was either a scramble for property or a general confiscation; the classes who took

part with the foreign invaders lost their property, as they would have done here, and ought to do everywhere.

All these are the vulgar errors of the man on the lion's back,which the lion will set to rights when he can

tell his own story. History is nothing but the relation of the sufferings of the poor from the rich; except

precisely so far as the numerous classes of the community have contrived to keep the virtual power in their

hands, or, in other words, to establish free governments. If a poor man injures the rich, the law is instantly at

his heels; the injuries of the rich towards the poor are always inflicted BY the law. And to enable the rich to

do this to any extent that may be practicable or prudent, there is clearly one postulate required, which is, that

This passage is alone sufficient to prove that Mr Bentham has not taken the trouble to read our article from

beginning to end. We are quite sure that he would not stoop to misrepresent it. And, if he had read it with any

attention, he would have perceived that all this coquetry, this hesitation, this Yes and No, this saying and not

saying, is simply an exercise of the undeniable right which in controversy belongs to the defensive sideto

the side which proposes to establish nothing. The affirmative of the issue and the burden of the proof are with

Mr Mill, not with us. We are not bound, perhaps we are not able, to show that the form of government which

he recommends is bad. It is quite enough if we can show that he does not prove it to be good. In his proof,

among many other flaws, is thisHe says, that if men are not inclined to plunder each other, government is

unnecessary, and that, if men are so inclined, kings and aristocracies will plunder the people. Now, this we

say, is a fallacy. That SOME men will plunder their neighbours if they can, is a sufficient reason for the

existence of governments. But it is not demonstrated that kings and aristocracies will plunder the people,

unless it be true that ALL men will plunder their neighbours, if they can. Men are placed in very different

situations. Some have all the bodily pleasures that they desire, and many other pleasures besides, without

plundering anybody. Others can scarcely obtain their daily bread without plundering. It may be true, but

surely it is not selfevident, that the former class is under as strong temptations to plunder as the latter. Mr

Mill was therefore bound to prove it. That he has not proved it is one of thirty or forty fatal errors in his

argument. It is not necessary that we should express an opinion or even have an opinion on the subject.

Perhaps we are in a state of perfect scepticism: but what then? Are we the theorymakers? When we bring

before the world a theory of government, it will be time to call upon us to offer proof at every step. At present

we stand on our undoubted logical right. We concede nothing; and we deny nothing. We say to the Utilitarian

theorists:When you prove your doctrine, we will believe it; and, till you prove it, we will not believe it.

Mr Bentham has quite misunderstood what we said about the French Revolution. We never alluded to that

event for the purpose of proving that the poor were inclined to rob the rich. Mr Mill's principles of human

nature furnished us with that part of our argument readymade. We alluded to the French Revolution for the

purpose of illustrating the effects which general spoliation produces on society, not for the purpose of

showing that general spoliation will take place under a democracy. We allowed distinctly that, in the peculiar

circumstances of the French monarchy, the Revolution, though accompanied by a great shock to the

institution of property, was a blessing. Surely Mr Bentham will not maintain that the injury produced by the

deluge of assignats and by the maximum fell only on the emigrants,or that there were not many emigrants

who would have stayed and lived peaceably under any government if their persons and property had been

We never said that the French Revolution took place because the poor began to compare their cottages and

salads with the hotels and banquets of the rich. We were not speaking about THE CAUSES of the

Revolution, or thinking about them. This we said, and say, that, if a democratic government had been

established in France, the poor, when they began to compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and

banquets of the rich, would, on the supposition that Mr Mill's principles are sound, have plundered the rich,

and repeated without provocation all the severities and confiscations which at the time of the Revolution,

were committed with provocation. We say that Mr Mill's favourite form of government would, if his own

views of human nature be just, make those violent convulsions and transfers of property which now rarely

happen, except, as in the case of the French Revolution, when the people are maddened by oppression, events

of annual or biennial occurrence. We gave no opinion of our own. We give none now. We say that this

proposition may be proved from Mr Mill's own premises, by steps strictly analogous to those by which he

proves monarchy and aristocracy to be bad forms of government. To say this, is not to say that the

proposition is true. For we hold both Mr Mill's premises and his deduction to be unsound throughout.

Mr Bentham challenges us to prove from history that the people will plunder the rich. What does history say

to Mr Mill's doctrine, that absolute kings will always plunder their subjects so unmercifully as to leave

nothing but a bare subsistence to any except their own creatures? If experience is to be the test, Mr Mill's

theory is unsound. If Mr Mill's reasoning a priori be sound, the people in a democracy will plunder the rich.

Let us use one weight and one measure. Let us not throw history aside when we are proving a theory, and

take it up again when we have to refute an objection founded on the principles of that theory.

"Among other specimens of their ingenuity, they think they embarrass the subject by asking why, on the

principles in question, women should not have votes as well as men. AND WHY NOT?

If the mode of election was what it ought to be, there would be no more difficulty in women voting for a

representative in Parliament than for a director at the India House. The world will find out at some time that

the readiest way to secure justice on some points is to be just on all:that the whole is easier to accomplish

than the part; and that, whenever the camel is driven through the eye of the needle, it would be simple folly

Why, says or sings Mr Bentham, should not women vote? It may seem uncivil in us to turn a deaf ear to his

Arcadian warblings. But we submit, with great deference, that it is not OUR business to tell him why. We

fully agree with him that the principle of female suffrage is not so palpably absurd that a chain of reasoning

ought to be pronounced unsound merely because it leads to female suffrage. We say that every argument

which tells in favour of the universal suffrage of the males tells equally in favour of female suffrage. Mr Mill,

however, wishes to see all men vote, but says that it is unnecessary that women should vote; and for making

this distinction HE gives as a reason an assertion which, in the first place, is not true, and which, in the next

place, would, if true, overset his whole theory of human nature; namely, that the interest of the women is

identical with that of the men. We side with Mr Bentham, so far, at least, as this: that, when we join to drive

the camel through the needle, he shall go through hoof and all. We at present desire to be excused from

driving the camel. It is Mr Mill who leaves the hoof behind. But we should think it uncourteous to reproach

him in the language which Mr Bentham, in the exercise of his paternal authority over the sect, thinks himself

"Another of their perverted ingenuities is, that 'they are rather inclined to think,' that it would, on the whole,

be for the interest of the majority to plunder the rich; and if so, the Utilitarians will say that the rich OUGHT

to be plundered. On which it is sufficient to reply, that for the majority to plunder the rich would amount to a

declaration that nobody should be rich; which, as all men wish to be rich, would involve a suicide of hope.

And as nobody has shown a fragment of reason why such a proceeding should be for the general happiness, it

does not follow that the 'Utilitarians' would recommend it. The Edinburgh Reviewers have a waiting

gentlewoman's ideas of 'Utilitarianism.' It is unsupported by anything but the pitiable 'We are rather inclined

to think'and is utterly contradicted by the whole course of history and human experience besides,that

there is either danger or possibility of such a consummation as the majority agreeing on the plunder of the

rich. There have been instances in human memory, of their agreeing to plunder rich oppressors, rich traitors,

rich enemies,but the rich simpliciter never. It is as true now as in the days of Harrington that 'a people

never will, nor ever can, never did, nor ever shall, take up arms for levelling.' All the commotions in the

world have been for something else; and 'levelling' is brought forward as the blind to conceal what the other

We say, again and again, that we are on the defensive. We do not think it necessary to prove that a quack

medicine is poison. Let the vendor prove it to be sanative. We do not pretend to show that universal suffrage

is an evil. Let its advocates show it to be a good. Mr Mill tells us that, if power be given for short terms to

representatives elected by all the males of mature age, it will then be for the interest of those representatives

to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. To prove this, it is necessary that he should prove

three propositions: first, that the interest of such a representative body will be identical with the interest of the

constituent body; secondly, that the interest of the constituent body will be identical with that of the

community; thirdly, that the interest of one generation of a community is identical with that of all succeeding

generations. The two first propositions Mr Mill attempts to prove and fails. The last he does not even attempt

to prove. We therefore refuse our assent to his conclusions. Is this unreasonable?

We never even dreamed, what Mr Bentham conceives us to have maintained, that it could be for the greatest

happiness of MANKIND to plunder the rich. But we are "rather inclined to think," though doubtingly and

with a disposition to yield to conviction, that it may be for the pecuniary interest of the majority of a single

generation in a thicklypeopled country to plunder the rich. Why we are inclined to think so we will explain,

whenever we send a theory of government to an Encyclopaedia. At present we are bound to say only that we

think so, and shall think so till somebody shows us a reason for thinking otherwise.

Mr Bentham's answer to us is simple assertion. He must not think that we mean any discourtesy by meeting it

with a simple denial. The fact is, that almost all the governments that have ever existed in the civilised world

have been, in part at least, monarchical and aristocratical. The first government constituted on principles

approaching to those which the Utilitarians hold was, we think, that of the United States. That the poor have

never combined to plunder the rich in the governments of the old world, no more proves that they might not

combine to plunder the rich under a system of universal suffrage, than the fact that the English kings of the

House of Brunswick have not been Neros and Domitians proves that sovereigns may safely be intrusted with

absolute power. Of what the people would do in a state of perfect sovereignty we can judge only by

indications, which, though rarely of much moment in themselves, and though always suppressed with little

difficulty, are yet of great significance, and resemble those by which our domestic animals sometimes remind

us that they are of kin with the fiercest monsters of the forest. It would not be wise to reason from the

behaviour of a dog crouching under the lash, which is the case of the Italian people, or from the behaviour of

a dog pampered with the best morsels of a plentiful kitchen, which is the case of the purpose of America, to

the behaviour of a wolf, which is nothing but a dog run wild, after a week's fast among the snows of the

Pyrenees. No commotion, says Mr Bentham, was ever really produced by the wish of levelling; the wish has

been put forward as a blind; but something else has been the real object. Grant all this. But why has levelling

been put forward as a blind in times of commotion to conceal the real objects of the agitators? Is it with

declarations which involve "a suicide of hope" that man attempt to allure others? Was famine, pestilence,

slavery, ever held out to attract the people? If levelling has been made a pretence for disturbances, the

argument against Mr Bentham's doctrine is as strong as if it had been the real object of disturbances.

But the great objection which Mr Bentham makes to our review, still remains to be noticed:

"The pith of the charge against the author of the Essays is, that he has written 'an elaborate Treatise on

Government,' and 'deduced the whole science from the assumption of certain propensities of human nature.'

Now, in the name of Sir Richard Birnie and all saints, from what else SHOULD it be deduced? What did ever

anybody imagine to be the end, object, and design of government AS IT OUGHT TO BE but the same

operation, on an extended scale, which that meritorious chief magistrate conducts on a limited one at Bow

Street; to wit, the preventing one man from injuring another? Imagine, then, that the Whiggery of Bow Street

were to rise up against the proposition that their science was to be deduced from 'certain propensities of

"'How then are we to arrive at just conclusions on a subject so important to the happiness of mankind? Surely

by that method, which, in every experimental science to which it has been applied, has signally increased the

power and knowledge of our species,by that method for which our new philosophers would substitute

quibbles scarcely worthy of the barbarous respondents and opponents of the middle ages,by the method of

induction, by observing the present state of the world,by assiduously studying the history of past

ages,by sifting the evidence of facts,by carefully combining and contrasting those which are

authentic,by generalising with judgment and diffidence,by perpetually bringing the theory which we

have constructed to the test of new facts,by correcting, or altogether abandoning it, according as those new

facts prove it to be partially or fundamentally unsound. Proceeding thus,patiently, diligently, candidly, we

may hope to form a system as far inferior in pretension to that which we have been examining, and as far

superior to it in real utility, as the prescriptions of a great physician, varying with every stage of every

malady, and with the constitution of every patient, to the pill of the advertising quack, which is to cure all

"Fancy now,only fancy,the delivery of these wise words at Bow Street; and think how speedily the

practical catchpolls would reply, that all this might be very fine, but, as far as they had studied history, the

naked story was, after all, that numbers of men had a propensity to thieving, and their business was to catch

them; that they, too, had been sifters of facts; and, to say the truth, their simple opinion was, that their

brethren of the red waistcoatthough they should be sorry to think ill of any man had somehow

contracted a leaning to the other side, and were more bent on puzzling the case for the benefit of the

defendants, than on doing the duty of good officers and true. Such would, beyond all doubt, be the sentence

passed on such trimmers in the microcosm of Bow Street. It might not absolutely follow that they were in a

plot to rob the goldsmiths' shops, or to set fire to the House of Commons; but it would be quite clear that they

had got A FEELING,that they were in process of siding with the thieves,and that it was not to them that

This is all very witty; but it does not touch us. On the present occasion, we cannot but flatter ourselves that

we bear a much greater resemblance to a practical catchpoll than either Mr Mill or Mr Bentham. It would, to

be sure, be very absurd in a magistrate discussing the arrangements of a policeoffice, to spout in the style

either of our article or Mr Bentham's; but, in substance, he would proceed, if he were a man of sense, exactly

as WE recommend. He would, on being appointed to provide for the security of property in a town, study

attentively the state of the town. He would learn at what places, at what times, and under what circumstances,

theft and outrage were most frequent. Are the streets, he would ask, most infested with thieves at sunset or at

midnight? Are there any public places of resort which give peculiar facilities to pickpockets? Are there any

districts completely inhabited by a lawless population? Which are the flash houses, and which the shops of

receivers? Having made himself master of the facts, he would act accordingly. A strong detachment of

officers might be necessary for Petticoat Lane; another for the pit entrance of Covent Garden Theatre.

Grosvenor Square and Hamilton Place would require little or no protection. Exactly thus should we reason

about government. Lombardy is oppressed by tyrants; and constitutional checks, such as may produce

security to the people, are required. It is, so to speak, one of the resorts of thieves; and there is great need of

policeofficers. Denmark resembles one of those respectable streets in which it is scarcely necessary to

station a catchpoll, because the inhabitants would at once join to seize a thief. Yet, even in such a street, we

should wish to see an officer appear now and then, as his occasional superintence would render the security

more complete. And even Denmark, we think, would be better off under a constitutional form of government.

Mr Mill proceeds like a director of police, who, without asking a single question about the state of his district,

should give his orders thus:"My maxim is, that every man will take what he can. Every man in London

would be a thief, but for the thieftakers. This is an undeniable principle of human nature. Some of my

predecessors have wasted their time in enquiring about particular pawnbrokers, and particular alehouses.

Experience is altogether divided. Of people placed in exactly the same situation, I see that one steals, and that

another would sooner burn his hand off. THEREFORE I trust to the laws of human nature alone, and

pronounce all men thieves alike. Let everybody, high and low, be watched. Let Townsend take particular care

that the Duke of Wellington does not steal the silk handkerchief of the lord in waiting at the levee. A person

has lost a watch. Go to Lord Fitzwilliam and search him for it; he is as great a receiver of stolen goods as

Ikey Solomons himself. Don't tell me about his rank, and character, and fortune. He is a man; and a man does

not change his nature when he is called a lord. ("If Government is founded upon this, as a law of human

nature, that a man, if able, will take from others anything which they have and he desires, it is sufficiently

evident that when a man is called a king, he does not change his nature, so that, when he has power to take

what he pleases, he will take what he pleases. To suppose that he will not, is to affirm that government is

unnecessary and that human beings will abstain from injuring one another of their own accord.""Mill on

Government".) Either men will steal or they will not steal. If they will not, why do I sit here? If they will, his

lordship must be a thief." The Whiggery of Bow Street would perhaps rise up against this wisdom. Would Mr

We blamed Mr Mill for deducing his theory of government from the principles of human nature. "In the name

of Sir Richard Birnie and all saints," cries Mr Bentham, "from what else should it be deduced?" In spite of

this solemn adjuration, with shall venture to answer Mr Bentham's question by another. How does he arrive at

those principles of human nature from which he proposes to deduce the science of government? We think that

we may venture to put an answer into his mouth; for in truth there is but one possible answer. He will

sayBy experience. But what is the extent of this experience? Is it an experience which includes experience

of the conduct of men intrusted with the powers of government; or is it exclusive of that experience? If it

includes experience of the manner in which men act when intrusted with the powers of government, then

those principles of human nature from which the science of government is to be deduced can only be known

after going through that inductive process by which we propose to arrive at the science of government. Our

knowledge of human nature, instead of being prior in order to our knowledge of the science of government,

will be posterior to it. And it would be correct to say, that by means of the science of government, and of

other kindred sciencesthe science of education, for example, which falls under exactly the same

If, on the other hand, we are to deduce the theory of government from principles of human nature, in arriving

at which principles we have not taken into the account the manner in which men act when invested with the

powers of government, then those principles must be defective. They have not been formed by a sufficiently

copious induction. We are reasoning, from what a man does in one situation, to what he will do in another.

Sometimes we may be quite justified in reasoning thus. When we have no means of acquiring information

about the particular case before us, we are compelled to resort to cases which bear some resemblance to it.

But the more satisfactory course is to obtain information about the particular case; and, whenever this can be

obtained, it ought to be obtained. When first the yellow fever broke out, a physician might be justified in

treating it as he had been accustomed to treat those complaints which, on the whole, had the most symptoms

in common with it. But what should we think of a physician who should now tell us that he deduced his

treatment of yellow fever from the general theory of pathology? Surely we should ask him, Whether, in

constructing his theory of pathology, he had or had not taken into the account the facts which had been

ascertained respecting the yellow fever? If he had, then it would be more correct to say that he had arrived at

the principles of pathology partly by his experience of cases of yellow fever than that he had deduced his

treatment of yellow fever from the principles of pathology. If he had not, he should not prescribe for us. If we

had the yellow fever, we should prefer a man who had never treated any cases but cases of yellow fever to a

man who had walked the hospitals of London and Paris for years, but who knew nothing of our particular

Let Lord Bacon speak for us: "Inductionem censemus eam esse demonstrandi formam, quae sensum tuetur, et

naturam premit, et operibus imminet, ac fere immiscetur. Itaque ordo quoque demonstrandi plane invertitur.

Adhuc enim res ita geri consuevit, ut a sensu et particularibus primo loco ad maxime generalia advoletur,

tanquam ad polos fixos, circa quos disputationes vertantur; ab illis caetera, per media, deriventur; via certe

compendiaria, sed praecipiti, et ad naturam impervia, ad disputationes proclivi et accommodata. At,

secundum nos, axiomata continenter et gradatim excitantur, ut non, nisi postremo loco, ad maxime generalia

veniatur." Can any words more exactly describe the political reasonings of Mr Mill than those in which Lord

Bacon thus describes the logomachies of the schoolmen? Mr Mill springs at once to a general principle of the

widest extent, and from that general principle deduces syllogistically every thing which is included in it. We

say with Bacon"non, nisi postremo loco, ad maxime generalia veniatur." In the present inquiry, the science

of human nature is the "maxime generale." To this the Utilitarian rushes at once, and from this he deduces a

hundred sciences. But the true philosopher, the inductive reasoner, travels up to it slowly, through those

As we have lying before us that incomparable volume, the noblest and most useful of all the works of the

human reason, the Novum Organum, we will transcribe a few lines, in which the Utilitarian philosophy is

"Syllogismus ad 'Principia' scientiarum non adhibetur, ad media axiomata frustra adhibetur, cum sit subtilitati

naturae longe impar. Assensum itaque constringit, non res. Syllogismus ex propositionibus constat,

propositiones ex verbis, verba notionum tesserae sunt. Itaque si notiones ipsae, id quod basis rei est, confusae

sint, et tenere a rebus abstractae, nihil in iis quae superstruuntur est firmitudinis. Itaque spes est una in

Inductione vera. In notionibus nil sani est, nec in Logicis nec in physicis. Non substantia, non qualitas, agere,

pati, ipsum esse, bonae notiones sunt; multo minus grave, leve, densum, tenue, humidum, siccum, generatio,

corruptio, attrahere, fugare, elementum, materia, forma, et id genus, sed omnes phantasticae et male

Substitute for the "substantia," the "generatio," the "corruptio," the "elementum," the "materia," of the old

schoolmen, Mr Mill's pain, pleasure, interest, power, objects of desire,and the words of Bacon will seem to

We have now gone through the objections that Mr Bentham makes to our article: and we submit ourselves on

The rest of Mr Bentham's article consists of an exposition of the Utilitarian principle, or, as he decrees that it

shall be called, the "greatest happiness principle." He seems to think that we have been assailing it. We never

said a syllable against it. We spoke slightingly of the Utilitarian sect, as we thought of them, and think of

them; but it was not for holding this doctrine that we blamed them. In attacking them we no more meant to

attack the "greatest happiness principle" than when we say that Mahometanism is a false religion we mean to

deny the unity of God, which is the first article of the Mahometan creed;no more than Mr Bentham, when

he sneers at the Whigs means to blame them for denying the divine right of kings. We reasoned throughout

our article on the supposition that the end of government was to produce the greatest happiness to mankind.

Mr Bentham gives an account of the manner in which he arrived at the discovery of the "greatest happiness

principle." He then proceeds to describe the effects which, as he conceives, that discovery is producing in

language so rhetorical and ardent that, if it had been written by any other person, a genuine Utilitarian would

"The only rivals of any note to the new principle which were brought forward, were those known by the

names of the 'moral sense,' and the 'original contract.' The new principle superseded the first of these, by

presenting it with a guide for its decisions; and the other, by making it unnecessary to resort to a remote and

imaginary contract for what was clearly the business of every man and every hour. Throughout the whole

horizon of morals and of politics, the consequences were glorious and vast. It might be said without danger of

exaggeration, that they who sat in darkness had seen a great light. The mists in which mankind had jousted

against each other were swept away, as when the sun of astronomical science arose in the full development of

the principle of gravitation. If the object of legislation was the greatest happiness, MORALITY was the

promotion of the same end by the conduct of the individual; and by analogy, the happiness of the world was

"...All the sublime obscurities, which had haunted the mind of man from the first formation of society,the

phantoms whose steps had been on earth, and their heads among the clouds marshalled themselves at the

sound of this new principle of connection and of union, and stood a regulated band, where all was order,

symmetry, and force. What men had struggled for and bled, while they saw it but as through a glass darkly,

was made the object of substantial knowledge and lively apprehension. The bones of sages and of patriots

stirred within their tombs, that what they dimly saw and followed had become the world's common heritage.

And the great result was wrought by no supernatural means, nor produced by any unparallelable

concatenation of events. It was foretold by no oracles, and ushered by no portents; but was brought about by

Mr Bentham's discovery does not, as we think we shall be able to show, approach in importance to that of

gravitation, to which he compares it. At all events, Mr Bentham seems to us to act much as Sir Isaac Newton

would have done if he had gone about boasting that he was the first person who taught bricklayers not to

Does Mr Bentham profess to hold out any new motive which may induce men to promote the happiness of

the species to which they belong? Not at all. He distinctly admits that, if he is asked why government should

"The real answer," says he, "appeared to be, that men at large OUGHT not to allow a government to afflict

them with more evil or less good than they can help. What A GOVERNMENT ought to do is a mysterious

and searching question, which those may answer who know what it means; but what other men ought to do is

a question of no mystery at all. The word OUGHT, if it means anything, must have reference to some kind of

interest or motives; and what interest a government has in doing right, when it happens to be interested in

doing wrong, is a question for the schoolmen. The fact appears to be, that OUGHT is not predicable of

governments. The question is not why governments are bound not to do this or that, but why OTHER MEN

should let them if they can help it. The point is not to determine why the lion should not eat sheep, but why

The principle of Mr Bentham, if we understand it, is this, that mankind ought to act so as to produce their

greatest happiness. The word OUGHT, he tells us, has no meaning, unless it be used with reference to some

interest. But the interest of a man is synonymous with his greatest happiness:and therefore to say that a

man ought to do a thing, is to say that it is for his greatest happiness to do it. And to say that mankind

OUGHT to act so as to produce their greatest happiness, is to say that the greatest happiness is the greatest

Does Mr Bentham's principle tend to make any man wish for anything for which he would not have wished,

or do anything which he would not have done, if the principle had never been heard of? If not, it is an utterly

useless principle. Now, every man pursues his own happiness or interestcall it which you will. If his

happiness coincides with the happiness of the species, then, whether he ever heard of the "greatest happiness

principle" or not, he will, to the best of his knowledge and ability, attempt to produce the greatest happiness

of the species. But, if what he thinks his happiness be inconsistent with the greatest happiness of mankind,

will this new principle convert him to another frame of mind? Mr Bentham himself allows, as we have seen,

that he can give no reason why a man should promote the greatest happiness of others if their greatest

happiness be inconsistent with what he thinks his own. We should very much like to know how the

Utilitarian principle would run when reduced to one plain imperative proposition? Will it run thuspursue

your own happiness? This is superfluous. Every man pursues it, according to his light, and always has

pursued it, and always must pursue it. To say that a man has done anything, is to say that he thought it for his

happiness to do it. Will the principle run thuspursue the greatest happiness of mankind, whether it be your

own greatest happiness or not? This is absurd and impossible; and Bentham himself allows it to be so. But, if

the principle be not stated in one of these two ways, we cannot imagine how it is to be stated at all. Stated in

one of these ways, it is an identical proposition,true, but utterly barren of consequences. Stated in the other

way, it is a contradiction in terms. Mr Bentham has distinctly declined the absurdity. Are we then to suppose

There are thus, it seems, two great truths which the Utilitarian philosophy is to communicate to

mankindtwo truths which are to produce a revolution in morals, in laws, in governments, in literature, in

the whole system of life. The first of these is speculative; the second is practical. The speculative truth is, that

the greatest happiness is the greatest happiness. The practical rule is very simple; for it imports merely that

men should never omit, when they wish for anything, to wish for it, or when they do anything, to do it! It is a

great comfort to us to think that we readily assented to the former of these great doctrines as soon as it was

stated to us; and that we have long endeavoured, as far as human frailty would permit, to conform to the latter

in our practice. We are, however, inclined to suspect that the calamities of the human race have been owing,

less to their not knowing that happiness was happiness, than to their not knowing how to obtain itless to

their neglecting to do what they did, than to their not being able to do what they wished, or not wishing to do

Thus frivolous, thus useless is this philosophy, "controversiarum ferax, operum effoeta, ad garriendum

prompta, ad generandum invalida." (Bacon, "Novum Organum".) The humble mechanic who discovers some

slight improvement in the construction of safety lamps or steamvessels does more for the happiness of

mankind than the "magnificent principle," as Mr Bentham calls it, will do in ten thousand years. The

mechanic teaches us how we may in a small degree be better off than we were. The Utilitarian advises us

The doctrine of a moral sense may be very unphilosophical; but we do not think that it can be proved to be

pernicious. Men did not entertain certain desires and aversions because they believed in a moral sense, but

they gave the name of moral sense to a feeling which they found in their minds, however it came there. If

they had given it no name at all it would still have influenced their actions; and it will not be very easy to

demonstrate that it has influenced their actions the more because they have called it the moral sense. The

theory of the original contract is a fiction, and a very absurd fiction; but in practice it meant, what the

"greatest happiness principle," if ever it becomes a watchword of political warfare, will meanthat is to say,

whatever served the turn of those who used it. Both the one expression and the other sound very well in

debating clubs; but in the real conflicts of life our passions and interests bid them stand aside and know their

place. The "greatest happiness principle" has always been latent under the words, social contract, justice,

benevolence, patriotism, liberty, and so forth, just as far as it was for the happiness, real or imagined, of those

who used these words to promote the greatest happiness of mankind. And of this we may be sure, that the

words "greatest happiness" will never, in any man's mouth, mean more than the greatest happiness of others

which is consistent with what he thinks his own. The project of mending a bad world by teaching people to

give new names to old things reminds us of Walter Shandy's scheme for compensating the loss of his son's

nose by christening him Trismegistus. What society wants is a new motivenot a new cant. If Mr Bentham

can find out any argument yet undiscovered which may induce men to pursue the general happiness, he will

indeed be a great benefactor to our species. But those whose happiness is identical with the general happiness

are even now promoting the general happiness to the very best of their power and knowledge; and Mr

Bentham himself confesses that he has no means of persuading those whose happiness is not identical with

the general happiness to act upon his principle. Is not this, then, darkening counsel by words without

knowledge? If the only fruit of the "magnificent principle" is to be, that the oppressors and pilferers of the

next generation are to talk of seeking the greatest happiness of the greatest number, just as the same class of

men have talked in our time of seeking to uphold the Protestant constitutionjust as they talked under Anne

of seeking the good of the Church, and under Cromwell of seeking the Lordwhere is the gain? Is not every

great question already enveloped in a sufficiently dark cloud of unmeaning words? Is it so difficult for a man

to cant some one or more of the good old English cants which his father and grandfather canted before him,

that he must learn, in the schools of the Utilitarians, a new sleight of tongue, to make fools clap and wise men

sneer? Let our countrymen keep their eyes on the neophytes of this sect, and see whether we turn out to be

mistaken in the prediction which we now hazard. It will before long be found, we prophesy, that, as the

corruption of a dunce is the generation of an Utilitarian, so is the corruption of an Utilitarian the generation of

The most elevated station that the "greatest happiness principle" is ever likely to attain is this, that it may be a

fashionable phrase among newspaper writers and members of parliamentthat it may succeed to the dignity

which has been enjoyed by the "original contract," by the "constitution of 1688," and other expressions of the

same kind. We do not apprehend that it is a less flexible cant than those which have preceded it, or that it will

less easily furnish a pretext for any design for which a pretext may be required. The "original contract" meant

in the Convention Parliament the coordinate authority of the Three Estates. If there were to be a radical

insurrection tomorrow, the "original contract" would stand just as well for annual parliaments and universal

suffrage. The "Glorious Constitution," again, has meant everything in turn: the Habeas Corpus Act, the

Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act, the Test Act, the Repeal of the Test Act. There has not been for many

years a single important measure which has not been unconstitutional with its opponents, and which its

supporters have not maintained to be agreeable to the true spirit of the constitution. Is it easier to ascertain

what is for the greatest happiness of the human race than what is the constitution of England? If not, the

"greatest happiness principle" will be what the "principles of the constitution" are, a thing to be appealed to

by everybody, and understood by everybody in the sense which suits him best. It will mean cheap bread, dear

bread, free trade, protecting duties, annual parliaments, septennial parliaments, universal suffrage, Old

Sarum, trial by jury, martial laweverything, in short, good, bad, or indifferent, of which any person, from

rapacity or from benevolence, chooses to undertake the defence. It will mean sixandeightpence with the

attorney, tithes at the rectory, and gamelaws at the manorhouse. The Statute of Uses, in appearance the

most sweeping legislative reform in our history, was said to have produced no other effect than that of adding

three words to a conveyance. The universal admission of Mr Bentham's great principle would, as far as we

can see, produce no other effect than that those orators who, while waiting for a meaning, gain time (like

bankers paying in sixpences during a run) by uttering words that mean nothing would substitute "the greatest

happiness," or rather, as the longer phrase, "the greatest happiness of the greatest number," for "under

existing circumstances,""now that I am on my legs,"and "Mr Speaker, I, for one, am free to say." In

fact, principles of this sort resemble those forms which are sold by lawstationers, with blanks for the names

of parties, and for the special circumstances of every casemere customary headings and conclusions, which

are equally at the command of the most honest and of the most unrighteous claimant. It is on the filling up

The "greatest happiness principle" of Mr Bentham is included in the Christian morality; and, to our thinking,

it is there exhibited in an infinitely more sound and philosophical form than in the Utilitarian speculations.

For in the New Testament it is neither an identical proposition, nor a contradiction in terms; and, as laid down

by Mr Bentham, it must be either the one or the other. "Do as you would be done by: Love your neighbour as

yourself:" these are the precepts of Jesus Christ. Understood in an enlarged sense, these precepts are, in fact, a

direction to every man to promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. But this direction would be

utterly unmeaning, as it actually is in Mr Bentham's philosophy, unless it were accompanied by a sanction. In

the Christian scheme, accordingly, it is accompanied by a sanction of immense force. To a man whose

greatest happiness in this world is inconsistent with the greatest happiness of the greatest number is held out

the prospect of an infinite happiness hereafter, from which he excludes himself by wronging his

This is practical philosophy, as practical as that on which penal legislation is founded. A man is told to do

something which otherwise he would not do, and is furnished with a new motive for doing it. Mr Bentham

has no new motive to furnish his disciples with. He has talents sufficient to effect anything that can be

effected. But to induce men to act without an inducement is too much, even for him. He should reflect that

the whole vast world of morals cannot be moved unless the mover can obtain some stand for his engines

beyond it. He acts as Archimedes would have done, if he had attempted to move the earth by a lever fixed on

the earth. The action and reaction neutralise each other. The artist labours, and the world remains at rest. Mr

Bentham can only tell us to do something which we have always been doing, and should still have continued

to do, if we had never heard of the "greatest happiness principle"or else to do something which we have no

conceivable motive for doing, and therefore shall not do. Mr Bentham's principle is at best no more than the

golden rule of the Gospel without its sanction. Whatever evils, therefore, have existed in societies in which

the authority of the Gospel is recognised may, a fortiori, as it appears to us, exist in societies in which the

Utilitarian principle is recognised. We do not apprehend that it is more difficult for a tyrant or a persecutor to

persuade himself and others that in putting to death those who oppose his power or differ from his opinions

he is pursuing "the greatest happiness," than that he is doing as he would be done by. But religion gives him a

motive for doing as he would be done by: and Mr Bentham furnishes him no motive to induce him to

promote the general happiness. If, on the other hand, Mr Bentham's principle mean only that every man

should pursue his own greatest happiness, he merely asserts what everybody knows, and recommends what

It is not upon this "greatest happiness principle" that the fame of Mr Bentham will rest. He has not taught

people to pursue their own happiness; for that they always did. He has not taught them to promote the

happiness of others, at the expense of their own; for that they will not and cannot do. But he has taught them

HOW, in some most important points, to promote their own happiness; and, if his school had emulated him

as successfully in this respect as in the trick of passing off truisms for discoveries, the name of Benthamite

would have been no word for the scoffer. But few of those who consider themselves as in a more especial

manner his followers have anything in common with him but his faults. The whole science of Jurisprudence

is his. He has done much for political economy; but we are not aware that in either department any

improvement has been made by members of his sect. He discovered truths; all that THEY have done has been

to make those truths unpopular. He investigated the philosophy of law; he could teach them only to snarl at

We entertain no apprehensions of danger to the institutions of this country from the Utilitarians. Our fears are

of a different kind. We dread the odium and discredit of their alliance. We wish to see a broad and clear line

drawn between the judicious friends of practical reform and a sect which, having derived all its influence

from the countenance which they have imprudently bestowed upon it, hates them with the deadly hatred of

ingratitude. There is not, and we firmly believe that there never was, in this country a party so unpopular.

They have already made the science of political economya science of vast importance to the welfare of

nationsan object of disgust to the majority of the community. The question of parliamentary reform will

share the same fate if once an association be formed in the public mind between Reform and Utilitarianism.

We bear no enmity to any member of the sect; and for Mr Bentham we entertain very high admiration. We

know that among his followers there are some wellintentioned men, and some men of talents; but we cannot

say that we think the logic on which they pride themselves likely to improve their heads, or the scheme of

morality which they have adopted likely to improve their hearts. Their theory of morals, however, well

deserves an article to itself; and perhaps, on some future occasion, we may discuss it more fully than time and

The preceding article was written, and was actually in types, when a letter from Mr Bentham appeared in the

newspapers, importing that, "though he had furnished the Westminster Review with some memoranda

respecting 'the greatest happiness principle,' he had nothing to do with the remarks on our former article." We

are truly happy to find that this illustrious man had so small a share in a performance which, for his sake, we

have treated with far greater lenity than it deserved. The mistake, however, does not in the least affect any

part of our arguments; and we have therefore thought it unnecessary to cancel or cast anew any of the

foregoing pages. Indeed, we are not sorry that the world should see how respectfully we were disposed to

treat a great man, even when we considered him as the author of a very weak and very unfair attack on

ourselves. We wish, however, to intimate to the actual writer of that attack that our civilities were intended

for the author of the "Preuves Judiciaires," and the "Defence of Usury"and not for him. We cannot

conclude, indeed, without expressing a wishthough we fear it has but little chance of reaching Mr

Benthamthat he would endeavour to find better editors for his compositions. If M. Dumont had not been a

redacteur of a different description from some of his successors, Mr Bentham would never have attained the

Westminster Review (XXII., Article 16), on the Strictures of the Edinburgh Review (XCVIII., Article 1), on

We have long been of opinion that the Utilitarians have owed all their influence to a mere delusionthat,

while professing to have submitted their minds to an intellectual discipline of peculiar severity, to have

discarded all sentimentality, and to have acquired consummate skill in the art of reasoning, they are decidedly

inferior to the mass of educated men in the very qualities in which they conceive themselves to excel. They

have undoubtedly freed themselves from the dominion of some absurd notions. But their struggle for

intellectual emancipation has ended, as injudicious and violent struggles for political emancipation too often

end, in a mere change of tyrants. Indeed, we are not sure that we do not prefer the venerable nonsense which

holds prescriptive sway over the ultraTory to the upstart dynasty of prejudices and sophisms by which the

The Utilitarians have sometimes been abused as intolerant, arrogant, irreligious,as enemies of literature, of

the fine arts, and of the domestic charities. They have been reviled for some things of which they were guilty,

and for some of which they were innocent. But scarcely anybody seems to have perceived that almost all their

peculiar faults arise from the utter want both of comprehensiveness and of precision in their mode of

reasoning. We have, for some time past, been convinced that this was really the case; and that, whenever their

philosophy should be boldly and unsparingly scrutinised, the world would see that it had been under a

We have made the experiment; and it has succeeded far beyond our most sanguine expectations. A chosen

champion of the School has come forth against us. A specimen of his logical abilities now lies before us; and

we pledge ourselves to show that no prebendary at an antiCatholic meeting, no trueblue baronet after the

third bottle at a Pitt Club, ever displayed such utter incapacity of comprehending or answering an argument

as appears in the speculations of this Utilitarian apostle; that he does not understand our meaning, or Mr

Mill's meaning, or Mr Bentham's meaning, or his own meaning; and that the various parts of his systemif

Having shown this, we intend to leave him in undisputed possession of whatever advantage he may derive

from the last word. We propose only to convince the public that there is nothing in the farframed logic of

the Utilitarians of which any plain man has reason to be afraid; that this logic will impose on no man who

The Westminster Reviewer begins by charging us with having misrepresented an important part of Mr Mill's

"The first extract given by the Edinburgh Reviewers from the Essay was an insulated passage, purposely

despoiled of what had preceded and what followed. The author had been observing, that 'some profound and

benevolent investigators of human affairs had adopted the conclusion that, of all the possible forms of

government, absolute monarchy is the best.' This is what the reviewers have omitted at the beginning. He

then adds, as in the extract, that 'Experience, IF WE LOOK ONLY AT THE OUTSIDE OF THE FACTS,

appears to be divided on this subject;' there are Caligulas in one place, and kings of Denmark in another. 'As

the surface of history affords, therefore, no certain principle of decision, WE MUST GO BEYOND THE

SURFACE, and penetrate to the springs within.' This is what the reviewers have omitted at the end."

It is perfectly true that our quotation from Mr Mill's essay was, like most other quotations, preceded and

followed by something which we did not quote. But, if the Westminster Reviewer means to say that either

what preceded or what followed would, if quoted, have shown that we put a wrong interpretation on the

Mr Mill undoubtedly says that, "as the surface of history affords no certain principle of decision, we must go

beyond the surface, and penetrate to the springs within." But these expressions will admit of several

interpretations. In what sense, then, does Mr Mill use them? If he means that we ought to inspect the facts

with close attention, he means what is rational. But, if he means that we ought to leave the facts, with all their

apparent inconsistencies, unexplainedto lay down a general principle of the widest extent, and to deduce

doctrines from that principle by syllogistic argument, without pausing to consider whether those doctrines be

or be not consistent with the facts,then he means what is irrational; and this is clearly what he does mean:

for he immediately begins, without offering the least explanation of the contradictory appearances which he

has himself described, to go beyond the surface in the following manner:"That one human being will

desire to render the person and property of another subservient to his pleasures, notwithstanding the pain or

loss of pleasure which it may occasion to that other individual, is the foundation of government. The desire of

the object implies the desire of the power necessary to accomplish the object." And thus he proceeds to

deduce consequences directly inconsistent with what he has himself stated respecting the situation of the

If we assume that the object of government is the preservation of the persons and property of men, then we

must hold that, wherever that object is attained, there the principle of good government exists. If that object

be attained both in Denmark and in the United States of America, then that which makes government good

must exist, under whatever disguise of title or name, both in Denmark and in the United States. If men lived

in fear for their lives and their possessions under Nero and under the National Convention, it follows that the

causes from which misgovernment proceeds existed both in the despotism of Rome and in the democracy of

France. What, then, is that which, being found in Denmark and in the United States, and not being found in

the Roman Empire or under the administration of Robespierre, renders governments, widely differing in their

external form, practically good? Be it what it may, it certainly is not that which Mr Mill proves a priori that it

must be,a democratic representative assembly. For the Danes have no such assembly.

The latent principle of good government ought to be tracked, as it appears to us, in the same manner in which

Lord Bacon proposed to track the principle of Heat. Make as large a list as possible, said that great man, of

those bodies in which, however widely they differ from each other in appearance, we perceive heat; and as

large a list as possible of those which, while they bear a general resemblance to hot bodies, are nevertheless

not hot. Observe the different degrees of heat in different hot bodies; and then, if there be something which is

found in all hot bodies, and of which the increase or diminution is always accompanied by an increase or

diminution of heat, we may hope that we have really discovered the object of our search. In the same manner

we ought to examine the constitution of all those communities in which, under whatever form, the blessings

of good government are enjoyed; and to discover, if possible, in what they resemble each other, and in what

they all differ from those societies in which the object of government is not attained. By proceeding thus we

shall arrive, not indeed at a perfect theory of government, but at a theory which will be of great practical use,

and which the experience of every successive generation will probably bring nearer and nearer to perfection.

The inconsistencies into which Mr Mill has been betrayed by taking a different course ought to serve as a

warning to all speculators. Because Denmark is well governed by a monarch who, in appearance at least, is

absolute, Mr Mill thinks that the only mode of arriving at the true principles of government is to deduce them

a priori from the laws of human nature. And what conclusion does he bring out by this deduction? We will

give it in his own words:"In the grand discovery of modern times, the system of representation, the

solution of all the difficulties, both speculative and practical, will perhaps be found. If it cannot, we seem to

be forced upon the extraordinary conclusion that good government is impossible." That the Danes are well

governed without a representation is a reason for deducing the theory of government from a general principle

from which it necessarily follows that good government is impossible without a representation! We have

done our best to put this question plainly; and we think that, if the Westminster Reviewer will read over what

we have written twice or thrice with patience and attention, some glimpse of our meaning will break in even

Some objections follow, so frivolous and unfair, that we are almost ashamed to notice them.

"When it was said that there was in Denmark a balanced contest between the king and the nobility, what was

said was, that there was a balanced contest, but it did not last. It was balanced till something put an end to the

balance; and so is everything else. That such a balance will not last, is precisely what Mr Mill had

Mr Mill, we positively affirm, pretends to demonstrate, not merely that a balanced contest between the king

and the aristocracy will not last, but that the chances are as infinity to one against the existence of such a

balanced contest. This is a mere question of fact. We quote the words of the essay, and defy the Westminster

"It seems impossible that such equality should ever exist. How is it to be established? Or by what criterion is

it to be ascertained? If there is no such criterion, it must, in all cases, be the result of chance. If so, the

The Reviewer has confounded the division of power with the balance or equal division of power. Mr Mill

says that the division of power can never exist long, because it is next to impossible that the equal division of

"When Mr Mill asserted that it cannot be for the interest of either the monarchy or the aristocracy to combine

with the democracy, it is plain he did not assert that if the monarchy and aristocracy were in doubtful contest

with each other, they would not, either of them, accept of the assistance of the democracy. He spoke of their

taking the side of the democracy; not of their allowing the democracy to take side with themselves."

If Mr Mill meant anything, he must have meant thisthat the monarchy and the aristocracy will never forget

"The monarchy and aristocracy," says he, "have all possible motives for endeavouring to obtain unlimited

power over the persons and property of the community. The consequence is inevitable. They have all possible

motives for combining to obtain that power, and unless the people have power enough to be a match for both

they have no protection. The balance, therefore, is a thing the existence of which upon the best possible

If Mr Mill meant only what the Westminster Reviewer conceives him to have meant, his argument would

leave the popular theory of the balance quite untouched. For it is the very theory of the balance that the help

of the people will be solicited by the nobles when hard pressed by the king, and by the king when hard

pressed by the nobles; and that, as the price of giving alternate support to the crown and the aristocracy, they

will obtain something for themselves, as the Reviewer admits that they have done in Denmark. If Mr Mill

admits this, he admits the only theory of the balance of which we ever heardthat very theory which he has

declared to be wild and chimerical. If he denies it, he is at issue with the Westminster Reviewer as to the

We now come to a more important passage. Our opponent has discovered, as he conceives, a radical error

which runs through our whole argument, and vitiates every part of it. We suspect that we shall spoil his

"Mr Mill never asserted 'THAT UNDER NO DESPOTIC GOVERNMENT DOES ANY HUMAN BEING,

said that absolute power leads to such results 'by infallible sequence, where power over a community is

attained, AND NOTHING CHECKS.' The critic on the Mount never made a more palpable misquotation.

"The spirit of this misquotation runs through every part of the reply of the Edinburgh Review that relates to

the Essay on Government; and is repeated in as many shapes as the Roman pork. The whole description of

'Mr Mill's argument against despotism,' including the illustration from rightangled triangles and the

square of the hypothenuse,is founded on this invention of saying what an author has not said, and leaving

We thought, and still think, for reasons which our readers will soon understand, that we represented Mr Mill's

principle quite fairly, and according to the rule of law and common sense, ut res magis valeat quam pereat.

Let us, however, give him all the advantage of the explanation tendered by his advocate, and see what he will

The Utilitarian doctrine then is, not that despots and aristocracies will always plunder and oppress the people

In the first place, it is quite clear that the doctrine thus stated is of no use at all, unless the force of the checks

be estimated. The first law of motion is, that a ball once projected will fly on to all eternity with undiminished

velocity, unless something checks. The fact is, that a ball stops in a few seconds after proceeding a few yards

with very variable motion. Every man would wring his child's neck and pick his friend's pocket if nothing

checked him. In fact, the principle thus stated means only that governments will oppress unless they abstain

from oppressing. This is quite true, we own. But we might with equal propriety turn the maxim round, and

lay it down, as the fundamental principle of government, that all rulers will govern well, unless some motive

If there be, as the Westminster Reviewer acknowledges, certain checks which, under political institutions the

most arbitrary in seeming, sometimes produce good government, and almost always place some restraint on

the rapacity and cruelty of the powerful, surely the knowledge of those checks, of their nature, and of their

effect, must be a most important part of the science of government. Does Mr Mill say anything upon this part

The line of defence now taken by the Utilitarians evidently degrades Mr Mill's theory of government from the

rank which, till within the last few months, was claimed for it by the whole sect. It is no longer a practical

system, fit to guide statesmen, but merely a barren exercise of the intellect, like those propositions in

mechanics in which the effect of friction and of the resistance of the air is left out of the question; and which,

therefore, though correctly deduced from the premises, are in practice utterly false. For, if Mr Mill professes

to prove only that absolute monarchy and aristocracy are pernicious without checks,if he allows that there

are checks which produce good government even under absolute monarchs and aristocracies,and if he

omits to tell us what those checks are, and what effects they produce under different circumstances,he

But the fact is,and it is most extraordinary that the Westminster Reviewer should not have perceived

itthat if once the existence of checks on the abuse of power in monarchies and aristocracies be admitted,

the whole of Mr Mill's theory falls to the ground at once. This is so palpable, that in spite of the opinion of

the Westminster Reviewer, we must acquit Mr Mill of having intended to make such an admission. We still

think that the words, "where power over a community is attained, and nothing checks," must not be

understood to mean that under a monarchical or aristocratical form of government there can really be any

For all possible checks may be classed under two general heads, want of will, and want of power. Now, if

a king or an aristocracy, having the power to plunder and oppress the people, can want the will, all Mr Mill's

principles of human nature must be pronounced unsound. He tells us, "that the desire to possess unlimited

power of inflicting pain upon others, is an inseparable part of human nature;" and that "a chain of inference,

close and strong to a most unusual degree," leads to the conclusion that those who possess this power will

always desire to use it. It is plain, therefore, that, if Mr Mill's principles be sound, the check on a monarchical

If a king or an aristocracy, having, as Mr Mill tells us that they always must have, the will to oppress the

people with the utmost severity, want the power, then the government, by whatever name it may be called,

must be virtually a mixed government or a pure democracy: for it is quite clear that the people possess some

power in the statesome means of influencing the nominal rulers. But Mr Mill has demonstrated that no

mixed government can possibly exist, or at least that such a government must come to a very speedy end:

therefore, every country in which people not in the service of the government have, for any length of time,

been permitted to accumulate more than the bare means of subsistence must be a pure democracy. That is to

say, France before the revolution, and Ireland during the last century, were pure democracies. Prussia,

Austria, Russia, all the governments of the civilised world, are pure democracies. If this be not a reductio ad

The errors of Mr Mill proceed principally from that radical vice in his reasoning which, in our last number we

described in the words of Lord Bacon. The Westminster Reviewer is unable to discover the meaning of our

"The quotations from Lord Bacon are misapplications, such as anybody may make to anything he dislikes.

There is no more resemblance between pain, pleasure, motives, etc., and substantia, generatio, corruptio,

It would perhaps be unreasonable to expect that a writer who cannot understand his own English should

understand Lord Bacon's Latin. We will therefore attempt to make our meaning clearer.

What Lord Bacon blames in the schoolmen of his time is this, that they reasoned syllogistically on words

which had not been defined with precision; such as moist, dry, generation, corruption, and so forth. Mr Mill's

error is exactly of the same kind. He reasons syllogistically about power, pleasure, and pain, without

attaching any definite notion to any one of those words. There is no more resemblance, says the Westminster

Reviewer, between pain and substantia than between pain and a line or an angle. By his permission, in the

very point to which Lord Bacon's observation applies, Mr Mill's subjects do resemble the substantia and

elementum of the schoolmen and differ from the lines and magnitudes of Euclid. We can reason a priori on

mathematics, because we can define with an exactitude which precludes all possibility of confusion. If a

mathematician were to admit the least laxity into his notions, if he were to allow himself to be deluded by the

vague sense which words bear in popular use, or by the aspect of an illdrawn diagram, if he were to forget

in his reasonings that a point was indivisible, or that the definition of a line excluded breadth, there would be

no end to his blunders. The schoolmen tried to reason mathematically about things which had not been, and

perhaps could not be, defined with mathematical accuracy. We know the result. Mr Mill has in our time

attempted to do the same. He talks of power, for example, as if the meaning of the word power were as

determinate as the meaning of the word circle. But, when we analyse his speculations, we find that his notion

There are two senses in which we may use the word "power," and those words which denote the various

distributions of power, as, for example, "monarchy":the one sense popular and superficial, the other more

scientific and accurate. Mr Mill, since he chose to reason a priori, ought to have clearly pointed out in which

sense he intended to use words of this kind, and to have adhered inflexibly to the sense on which he fixed.

Instead of doing this, he flies backwards and forwards from the one sense to the other, and brings out

The state of those two communities to which he has himself referredthe kingdom of Denmark and the

empire of Romemay serve to illustrate our meaning. Looking merely at the surface of things, we should

call Denmark a despotic monarchy, and the Roman world, in the first century after Christ, an aristocratical

republic. Caligula was, in theory, nothing more than a magistrate elected by the senate, and subject to the

senate. That irresponsible dignity which, in the most limited monarchies of our time, is ascribed to the person

of the sovereign never belonged to the earlier Caesars. The sentence of death which the great council of the

commonwealth passed on Nero was strictly according to the theory of the constitution. Yet, in fact, the power

of the Roman emperors approached nearer to absolute dominion than that of any prince in modern Europe.

On the other hand, the King of Denmark, in theory the most despotic of princes, would in practice find it

most perilous to indulge in cruelty and licentiousness. Nor is there, we believe, at the present moment a

single sovereign in our part of the world who has so much real power over the lives of his subjects as

Robespierre, while he lodged at a chandler's and dined at a restaurateur's, exercised over the lives of those

Mr Mill and the Westminster Reviewer seem to agree that there cannot long exist in any society a division of

power between a monarch, an aristocracy, and the people, or between any two of them. However the power

be distributed, one of the three parties will, according to them, inevitably monopolise the whole. Now, what

is here meant by power? If Mr Mill speaks of the external semblance of power,of power recognised by the

theory of the constitution,he is palpably wrong. In England, for example, we have had for ages the name

and form of a mixed government, if nothing more. Indeed, Mr Mill himself owns that there are appearances

which have given colour to the theory of the balance, though he maintains that these appearances are

delusive. But, if he uses the word power in a deeper and philosophical sense, he is, if possible, still more in

the wrong than on the former supposition. For, if he had considered in what the power of one human being

over other human beings must ultimately consist, he would have perceived, not only that there are mixed

governments in the world, but that all the governments in the world, and all the governments which can even

If a king possessed the lamp of Aladdin,if he governed by the help of a genius who carried away the

daughters and wives of his subjects through the air to the royal Parcauxcerfs, and turned into stone every

man who wagged a finger against his majesty's government, there would indeed be an unmixed despotism.

But, fortunately, a ruler can be gratified only by means of his subjects. His power depends on their obedience;

and, as any three or four of them are more than a match for him by himself, he can only enforce the unwilling

Take any of those who are popularly called absolute princes Napoleon for example. Could Napoleon have

walked through Paris, cutting off the head of one person in every house which he passed? Certainly not

without the assistance of an army. If not, why not? Because the people had sufficient physical power to resist

him, and would have put forth that power in defence of their lives and of the lives of their children. In other

words, there was a portion of power in the democracy under Napoleon. Napoleon might probably have

indulged himself in such an atrocious freak of power if his army would have seconded him. But, if his army

had taken part with the people, he would have found himself utterly helpless; and, even if they had obeyed his

orders against the people, they would not have suffered him to decimate their own body. In other words, there

was a portion of power in the hands of a minority of the people, that is to say, in the hands of an aristocracy,

To come nearer home,Mr Mill tells us that it is a mistake to imagine that the English government is mixed.

He holds, we suppose, with all the politicians of the Utilitarian school, that it is purely aristocratical. There

certainly is an aristocracy in England; and we are afraid that their power is greater than it ought to be. They

have power enough to keep up the gamelaws and cornlaws; but they have not power enough to subject the

bodies of men of the lowest class to wanton outrage at their pleasure. Suppose that they were to make a law

that any gentleman of two thousand ayear might have a daylabourer or a pauper flogged with a

catofninetails whenever the whim might take him. It is quite clear that the first day on which such

flagellation should be administered would be the last day of the English aristocracy. In this point, and in

many other points which might be named, the commonalty in our island enjoy a security quite as complete as

if they exercised the right of universal suffrage. We say, therefore, that the English people have in their own

hands a sufficient guarantee that in some points the aristocracy will conform to their wishes;in other

words, they have a certain portion of power over the aristocracy. Therefore the English government is mixed.

Wherever a king or an oligarchy refrains from the last extremity of rapacity and tyranny through fear of the

resistance of the people, there the constitution, whatever it may be called, is in some measure democratical.

The admixture of democratic power may be slight. It may be much slighter than it ought to be; but some

admixture there is. Wherever a numerical minority, by means of superior wealth or intelligence, of political

concert, or of military discipline, exercises a greater influence on the society than any other equal number of

persons,there, whatever the form of government may be called, a mixture of aristocracy does in fact exist.

And, wherever a single man, from whatever cause, is so necessary to the community, or to any portion of it,

that he possesses more power than any other man, there is a mixture of monarchy. This is the philosophical

classification of governments: and if we use this classification we shall find, not only that there are mixed

governments, but that all governments are, and must always be, mixed. But we may safely challenge Mr Mill

to give any definition of power, or to make any classification of governments, which shall bear him out in his

It is evidently on the real distribution of power, and not on names and badges, that the happiness of nations

must depend. The representative system, though doubtless a great and precious discovery in politics, is only

one of the many modes in which the democratic part of the community can efficiently check the governing

few. That certain men have been chosen as deputies of the people,that there is a piece of paper stating such

deputies to possess certain powers,these circumstances in themselves constitute no security for good

government. Such a constitution nominally existed in France; while, in fact, an oligarchy of committees and

clubs trampled at once on the electors and the elected. Representation is a very happy contrivance for

enabling large bodies of men to exert their power with less risk of disorder than there would otherwise be.

But, assuredly, it does not of itself give power. Unless a representative assembly is sure of being supported in

the last resort by the physical strength of large masses who have spirit to defend the constitution and sense to

defend it in concert, the mob of the town in which it meets may overawe it;the howls of the listeners in its

glory may silence its deliberations;an able and daring individual may dissolve it. And, if that sense and

that spirit of which we speak be diffused through a society, then, even without a representative assembly, that

Which is the better able to defend himself;a strong man with nothing but his fists, or a paralytic cripple

encumbered with a sword which he cannot lift? Such, we believe, is the difference between Denmark and

some new republics in which the constitutional forms of the United States have been most sedulously

Look at the Long Parliament on the day on which Charles came to seize the five members: and look at it

again on the day when Cromwell stamped with his foot on its floor. On which day was its apparent power the

greater? On which day was its real power the less? Nominally subject, it was able to defy the sovereign.

Constitutions are in politics what paper money is in commerce. They afford great facilities and conveniences.

But we must not attribute to them that value which really belongs to what they represent. They are not power,

but symbols of power, and will, in an emergency, prove altogether useless unless the power for which they

stand be forthcoming. The real power by which the community is governed is made up of all the means

Great light may be thrown on the nature of a circulating medium by the phenomena of a state of barter. And

in the same manner it may be useful to those who wish to comprehend the nature and operation of the

outward signs of power to look at communities in which no such signs exist; for example, at the great

community of nations. There we find nothing analogous to a constitution; but do we not find a government?

We do in fact find government in its purest, and simplest, and most intelligible form. We see one portion of

power acting directly on another portion of power. We see a certain police kept up; the weak to a certain

degree protected; the strong to a certain degree restrained. We see the principle of the balance in constant

operation. We see the whole system sometimes undisturbed by any attempt at encroachment for twenty or

thirty years at a time; and all this is produced without a legislative assembly, or an executive magistracy

without tribunalswithout any code which deserves the name; solely by the mutual hopes and fears of the

various members of the federation. In the community of nations, the first appeal is to physical force. In

communities of men, forms of government serve to put off that appeal, and often render it unnecessary. But it

Of course, we do not mean to deny that a form of government will, after it has existed for a long time,

materially affect the real distribution of power throughout the community. This is because those who

administer a government, with their dependants, form a compact and disciplined body, which, acting

methodically and in concert, is more powerful than any other equally numerous body which is inferior in

organisation. The power of rulers is not, as superficial observers sometimes seem to think, a thing sui generis.

It is exactly similar in kind, though generally superior in amount, to that of any set of conspirators who plot to

overthrow it. We have seen in our time the most extensive and the best organised conspiracy that ever

existeda conspiracy which possessed all the elements of real power in so great a degree that it was able to

cope with a strong government, and to triumph over itthe Catholic Association. An Utilitarian would tell

us, we suppose, that the Irish Catholics had no portion of political power whatever on the first day of the late

Let us really go beyond the surface of facts: let us, in the sound sense of the words, penetrate to the springs

within; and the deeper we go the more reason shall we find to smile at those theorists who hold that the sole

We must now return to the Westminster Reviewer. The following paragraph is an excellent specimen of his

"The reply to the argument against 'saturation,' supplies its own answer. The reason why it is of no use to try

to 'saturate' is precisely what the Edinburgh Reviewers have suggested,'THAT THERE IS NO LIMIT TO

THE NUMBER OF THIEVES.' There are the thieves, and the thieves' cousins,with their menservants,

their maidservants, and their little ones, to the fortieth generation. It is true, that 'a man cannot become a

king or a member of the aristocracy whenever he chooses;' but if there is to be no limit to the depredators

except their own inclination to increase and multiply, the situation of those who are to suffer is as wretched as

it needs be. It is impossible to define what ARE 'corporal pleasures.' A Duchess of Cleveland was 'a corporal

pleasure.' The most disgraceful period in the history of any nationthat of the Restorationpresents an

instance of the length to which it is possible to go in an attempt to 'saturate' with pleasures of this kind."

To reason with such a writer is like talking to a deaf man who catches at a stray word, makes answer beside

the mark, and is led further and further into error by every attempt to explain. Yet, that our readers may fully

appreciate the abilities of the new philosophers, we shall take the trouble to go over some of our ground

Mr Mill attempts to prove that there is no point of saturation with the objects of human desire. He then takes

it for granted that men have no objects of desire but those which can be obtained only at the expense of the

happiness of others. Hence he infers that absolute monarchs and aristocracies will necessarily oppress and

We answered in substance thus. There are two kinds of objects of desire; those which give mere bodily

pleasure, and those which please through the medium of associations. Objects of the former class, it is true, a

man cannot obtain without depriving somebody else of a share. But then with these every man is soon

satisfied. A king or an aristocracy cannot spend any very large portion of the national wealth on the mere

pleasures of sense. With the pleasures which belong to us as reasoning and imaginative beings we are never

satiated, it is true; but then, on the other hand, many of those pleasures can be obtained without injury to any

The Westminster Reviewer, in his former attack on us, laughed at us for saying that a king or an aristocracy

could not be easily satiated with the pleasures of sense, and asked why the same course was not tried with

thieves. We were not a little surprised at so silly an objection from the pen, as we imagined, of Mr Bentham.

We returned, however, a very simple answer. There is no limit to the number of thieves. Any man who

chooses can steal: but a man cannot become a member of the aristocracy or a king whenever he chooses. To

satiate one thief, is to tempt twenty other people to steal. But by satiating one king or five hundred nobles

with bodily pleasures we do not produce more kings or more nobles. The answer of the Westminster

Reviewer we have quoted above; and it will amply repay our readers for the trouble of examining it. We

never read any passage which indicated notions so vague and confused. The number of the thieves, says our

Utilitarian, is not limited. For there are the dependants and friends of the king and of the nobles. Is it possible

that he should not perceive that this comes under a different head? The bodily pleasures which a man in

power dispenses among his creatures are bodily pleasures as respects his creatures, no doubt. But the pleasure

which he derives from bestowing them is not a bodily pleasure. It is one of those pleasures which belong to

him as a reasoning and imaginative being. No man of common understanding can have failed to perceive that,

when we said that a king or an aristocracy might easily be supplied to satiety with sensual pleasures, we were

speaking of sensual pleasures directly enjoyed by themselves. But "it is impossible," says the Reviewer, "to

define what are corporal pleasures." Our brother would indeed, we suspect, find it a difficult task; nor, if we

are to judge of his genius for classification from the specimen which immediately follows, would we advise

him to make the attempt. "A Duchess of Cleveland was a corporal pleasure." And to this wise remark is

appended a note, setting forth that Charles the Second gave to the Duchess of Cleveland the money which he

ought to have spent on the war with Holland. We scarcely know how to answer a man who unites so much

pretension to so much ignorance. There are, among the many Utilitarians who talk about Hume, Condillac,

and Hartley, a few who have read those writers. Let the Reviewer ask one of these what he thinks on the

subject. We shall not undertake to whip a pupil of so little promise through his first course of metaphysics.

We shall, therefore, only sayleaving him to guess and wonder what we can meanthat, in our opinion, the

Duchess of Cleveland was not a merely corporal pleasure,that the feeling which leads a prince to prefer

one woman to all others, and to lavish the wealth of kingdoms on her, is a feeling which can only be

But we are tired, and even more ashamed than tired, of exposing these blunders. The whole article is of a

piece. One passage, however, we must select, because it contains a very gross misrepresentation.

THAT THE POOR WERE INCLINED TO ROB THE RICH.' They only said, 'as soon as the poor AGAIN

began to compare their cottages and salads with the hotels and banquets of the rich, there would have been

We said that, IF MR MILL'S PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN NATURE WERE CORRECT, there would have

been another scramble for property, and another confiscation. We particularly pointed this out in our last

article. We showed the Westminster Reviewer that he had misunderstood us. We dwelt particularly on the

condition which was introduced into our statement. We said that we had not given, and did not mean to give,

any opinion of our own. And, after this, the Westminster Reviewer thinks proper to repeat his former

misrepresentation, without taking the least notice of that qualification to which we, in the most marked

We hasten on to the most curious part of the article under our considerationthe defence of the "greatest

happiness principle." The Reviewer charges us with having quite mistaken its nature.

"All that they have established is, that they do not understand it. Instead of the truism of the Whigs, 'that the

greatest happiness is the greatest happiness,' what Mr Bentham had demonstrated, or at all events had laid

such foundations that there was no trouble in demonstrating, was, that the greatest happiness of the individual

was in the long run to be obtained by pursuing the greatest happiness of the aggregate."

It was distinctly admitted by the Westminster Reviewer, as we remarked in our last article, that he could give

no answer to the question,why governments should attempt to produce the greatest possible happiness?

"Nothing of the kind will be admitted at all. In the passage thus selected to be tacked to the other, the

question started was, concerning 'the object of government;' in which government was spoken of as an

operation, not as anything that is capable of feeling pleasure or pain. In this sense it is true enough, that

We will quote, once again, the passage which we quoted in our last Number; and we really hope that our

"The real answer appeared to be, that men at large OUGHT not to allow a government to afflict them with

more evil or less good, than they can help. What a GOVERNMENT ought to do is a mysterious and

searching question which those may answer who know what it means; but what other men ought to do is a

question of no mystery at all. The word OUGHT, if it means anything, must have reference to some kind of

interest or motives; and what interest a government has in doing right, when it happens to be interested in

doing wrong, is a question for the schoolmen. The fact appears to be that OUGHT is not predicable of

governments. The question is not, why governments are bound not to do this or that, but why other men

should let them if they can help it. The point is not to determine why the lion should not eat sheep, but why

We defy the Westminster Reviewer to reconcile this passage with the "general happiness principle" as he

now states it. He tells us that he meant by government, not the people invested with the powers of

government, but a mere OPERATION incapable of feeling pleasure or pain. We say, that he meant the people

invested with the powers of government, and nothing else. It is true that OUGHT is not predicable of an

operation. But who would ever dream of raising any question about the DUTIES of an operation? What did

the Reviewer mean by saying, that a government could not be interested in doing right because it was

interested in doing wrong? Can an operation be interested in either? And what did he mean by his comparison

about the lion? Is a lion an operation incapable of pain or pleasure? And what did he mean by the expression,

"other men," so obviously opposed to the word "government?" But let the public judge between us. It is

The Reviewer does indeed seem to feel that his expressions cannot be explained away, and attempts to

shuffle out of the difficulty by owning, that "the double meaning of the word government was not got clear of

without confusion." He has now, at all events, he assures us, made himself master of Mr Bentham's

philosophy. The real and genuine "greatest happiness principle" is, that the greatest happiness of every

individual is identical with the greatest happiness of society; and all other "greatest happiness principles"

whatever are counterfeits. "This," says he, "is the spirit of Mr Bentham's principle; and if there is anything

Assuredly, if a fair and honourable opponent had, in discussing a question so abstruse as that concerning the

origin of moral obligation, made some unguarded admission inconsistent with the spirit of his doctrines, we

should not be inclined to triumph over him. But no tenderness is due to a writer who, in the very act of

confessing his blunders, insults those by whom his blunders have been detected, and accuses them of

The whole of this transaction illustrates excellently the real character of this sect. A paper comes forth,

professing to contain a full development of the "greatest happiness principle," with the latest improvements

of Mr Bentham. The writer boasts that his article has the honour of being the announcement and the organ of

this wonderful discovery, which is to make "the bones of sages and patriots stir within their tombs."

This "magnificent principle" is then stated thus: Mankind ought to pursue their greatest happiness. But there

are persons whose interest is opposed to the greatest happiness of mankind. OUGHT is not predicable of such

persons. For the word OUGHT has no meaning unless it be used with reference to some interest.

We answered, with much more lenity than we should have shown to such nonsense, had it not proceeded, as

we supposed, from Mr Bentham, that interest was synonymous with greatest happiness; and that, therefore, if

the word OUGHT has no meaning, unless used with reference to interest, then, to say that mankind ought to

pursue their greatest happiness, is simply to say, that the greatest happiness is the greatest happiness; that

every individual pursues his own happiness; that either what he thinks his happiness must coincide with the

greatest happiness of society or not; that, if what he thinks his happiness coincides with the greatest happiness

of society, he will attempt to promote the greatest happiness of society whether he ever heard of the "greatest

happiness principle" or not; and that, by the admission of the Westminster Reviewer, if his happiness is

inconsistent with the greatest happiness of society, there is no reason why he should promote the greatest

happiness of society. Now, that there are individuals who think that for their happiness which is not for the

greatest happiness of society is evident. The Westminster Reviewer allowed that some of these individuals

were in the right; and did not pretend to give any reason which could induce any one of them to think himself

in the wrong. So that the "magnificent principle" turned out to be, either a truism or a contradiction in terms;

The Westminster Reviewer had the wit to see that he could not defend this palpable nonsense; but, instead of

manfully owning that he had misunderstood the whole nature of the "greatest happiness principle" in the

summer, and had obtained new light during the autumn, he attempts to withdraw the former principle

unobserved, and to substitute another, directly opposed to it, in its place; clamouring all the time against our

unfairness, like one who, while changing the cards, diverts the attention of the table from his sleight of hand

The "greatest happiness principle" for the present quarter is then this,that every individual will best

promote his own happiness in this world, religious considerations being left out of the question, by promoting

the greatest happiness of the whole species. And this principle, we are told, holds good with respect to kings

"It is certain that the individual operators in any government, if they were thoroughly intelligent and entered

into a perfect calculation of all existing chances, would seek for their own happiness in the promotion of the

general; which brings them, if they knew it, under Mr Bentham's rule. The mistake of supposing the contrary,

lies in confounding criminals who have had the luck to escape punishment with those who have the risk still

before them. Suppose, for instance, a member of the House of Commons were at this moment to debate

within himself, whether it would be for his ultimate happiness to begin, according to his ability, to

misgovern. If he could be sure of being as lucky as some that are dead and gone, there might be difficulty in

finding him an answer. But he is NOT sure; and never can be, till he is dead. He does not know that he is not

close upon the moment when misgovernment such as he is tempted to contemplate, will be made a terrible

example of. It is not fair to pick out the instance of the thief that has died unhanged. The question is, whether

thieving is at this moment an advisable trade to begin with all the possibilities of hanging not got over? This

is the spirit of Mr Bentham's principle; and if there is anything opposed to it in any former statement, it may

We hope that we have now at last got to the real "magnificent principle,"to the principle which is really to

make "the bones of the sages and patriots stir." What effect it may produce on the bones of the dead we shall

not pretend to decide; but we are sure that it will do very little for the happiness of the living.

In the first place, nothing is more certain than this, that the Utilitarian theory of government, as developed in

Mr Mill's Essay and in all the other works on the subject which have been put forth by the sect, rests on those

two principles,that men follow their interest, and that the interest of individuals may be, and in fact

perpetually is, opposed to the interest of society. Unless these two principles be granted, Mr Mill's Essay does

not contain one sound sentence. All his arguments against monarchy and aristocracy, all his arguments in

favour of democracy, nay, the very argument by which he shows that there is any necessity for having

This is so palpable that even the Westminster Reviewer, though not the most clearsighted of men, could not

help seeing it. Accordingly, he attempts to guard himself against the objection, after the manner of such

reasoners, by committing two blunders instead of one. "All this," says he, "only shows that the members of a

government would do well if they were allwise," and he proceeds to tell us that, as rulers are not allwise,

they will invariably act against this principle wherever they can, so that the democratical checks will still be

No form which human folly takes is so richly and exquisitely laughable as the spectacle of an Utilitarian in a

dilemma. What earthly good can there be in a principle upon which no man will act until he is allwise? A

certain most important doctrine, we are told, has been demonstrated so clearly that it ought to be the

foundation of the science of government. And yet the whole frame of government is to be constituted exactly

as if this fundamental doctrine were false, and on the supposition that no human being will ever act as if he

The whole argument of the Utilitarians in favour of universal suffrage proceeds on the supposition that even

the rudest and most uneducated men cannot, for any length of time, be deluded into acting against their own

true interest. Yet now they tell us that, in all aristocratical communities, the higher and more educated class

will, not occasionally, but invariably, act against its own interest. Now, the only use of proving anything, as

far as we can see, is that people may believe it. To say that a man does what he believes to be against his

happiness is a contradiction in terms. If, therefore, government and laws are to be constituted on the

supposition on which Mr Mill's Essay is founded, that all individuals will, whenever they have power over

others put into their hands, act in opposition to the general happiness, then government and laws must be

constituted on the supposition that no individual believes, or ever will believe, his own happiness to be

identical with the happiness of society. That is to say, government and laws are to be constituted on the

supposition that no human being will ever be satisfied by Mr Bentham's proof of his "greatest happiness

principle,"a supposition which may be true enough, but which says little, we think, for the principle in

But where has this principle been demonstrated? We are curious, we confess, to see this demonstration which

is to change the face of the world and yet is to convince nobody. The most amusing circumstance is that the

Westminster Reviewer himself does not seem to know whether the principle has been demonstrated or not.

"Mr Bentham," he says, "has demonstrated it, or at all events has laid such foundations that there is no trouble

in demonstrating it." Surely it is rather strange that such a matter should be left in doubt. The Reviewer

proposed, in his former article, a slight verbal emendation in the statement of the principle; he then

announced that the principle had received its last improvement; and gloried in the circumstance that the

Westminster Review had been selected as the organ of that improvement. Did it never occur to him that one

Mr Bentham has not demonstrated the "greatest happiness principle," as now stated. He is far too wise a man

to think of demonstrating any such thing. In those sections of his "Introduction to the Principles of Morals

and Legislation", to which the Reviewer refers us in his note, there is not a word of the kind. Mr Bentham

says, most truly, that there are no occasions in which a man has not SOME motives for consulting the

happiness of other men; and he proceeds to set forth what those motives aresympathy on all occasions, and

the love of reputation on most occasions. This is the very doctrine which we have been maintaining against

Mr Mill and the Westminster Reviewer. The principal charge which we brought against Mr Mill was, that

those motives to which Mr Bentham ascribes so much influence were quite left out of consideration in his

theory. The Westminster Reviewer, in the very article now before us, abuses us for saying, in the spirit, and

almost in the words of Mr Bentham, that "there is a certain check to the rapacity and cruelty of men in their

desire of the good opinion of others." But does this principle, in which we fully agree with Mr Bentham, go

the length of the new "greatest happiness principle?" The question is, not whether men have SOME motives

for promoting the greatest happiness, but whether the STRONGER motives be those which impel them to

promote the greatest happiness. That this would always be the case if men knew their own worldly interests is

the assertion of the Reviewer. As he expresses some doubt whether Mr Bentham has demonstrated this or not,

The Reviewer has not attempted to give a general confirmation of the "greatest happiness principle;" but he

has tried to prove that it holds good in one or two particular cases. And even in those particular cases he has

utterly failed. A man, says he, who calculated the chances fairly would perceive that it would be for his

greatest happiness to abstain from stealing; for a thief runs a greater risk of being hanged than an honest man.

It would have been wise, we think, in the Westminster Reviewer, before he entered on a discussion of this

sort, to settle in what human happiness consists. Each of the ancient sects of philosophy held some tenet on

this subject which served for a distinguishing badge. The summum bonum of the Utilitarians, as far as we can

That it is an unpleasant thing to be hanged, we most willingly concede to our brother. But that the whole

question of happiness or misery resolves itself into this single point, we cannot so easily admit. We must look

at the thing purchased as well as the price paid for it. A thief, assuredly, runs a greater risk of being hanged

than a labourer; and so an officer in the army runs a greater risk of being shot than a banker's clerk; and a

governor of India runs a greater risk of dying of cholera than a lord of the bedchamber. But does it therefore

follow that every man, whatever his habits or feelings may be, would, if he knew his own happiness, become

a clerk rather than a cornet, or goldstick in waiting rather than governor of India?

Nothing can be more absurd than to suppose, like the Westminster Reviewer, that thieves steal only because

they do not calculate the chances of being hanged as correctly as honest men. It never seems to have occurred

to him as possible that a man may so greatly prefer the life of a thief to the life of a labourer that he may

determine to brave the risk of detection and punishment, though he may even think that risk greater than it

really is. And how, on Utilitarian principles, is such a man to be convinced that he is in the wrong? "You will

be found out." "Undoubtedly.""You will be hanged within two years.""I expect to be hanged within

one year.""Then why do you pursue this lawless mode of life?""Because I would rather live for one

year with plenty of money, dressed like a gentleman, eating and drinking of the best, frequenting public

places, and visiting a dashing mistress, than break stones on the road, or sit down to the loom, with the

A king, says the Reviewer again, would govern well, if he were wise, for fear of provoking his subjects to

insurrection. Therefore the true happiness of a king is identical with the greatest happiness of society. Tell

Charles II. that, if he will be constant to his queen, sober at table, regular at prayers, frugal in his expenses,

active in the transaction of business, if he will drive the herd of slaves, buffoons, and procurers from

Whitehall, and make the happiness of his people the rule of his conduct, he will have a much greater chance

of reigning in comfort to an advanced age; that his profusion and tyranny have exasperated his subjects, and

may, perhaps, bring him to an end as terrible as his father's. He might answer, that he saw the danger, but that

life was not worth having without ease and vicious pleasures. And what has our philosopher to say? Does he

not see that it is no more possible to reason a man out of liking a short life and a merry one more than a long

life and a dull one than to reason a Greenlander out of his train oil? We may say that the tastes of the thief

and the tyrant differ from ours; but what right have we to say, looking at this world alone, that they do not

It is the grossest ignorance of human nature to suppose that another man calculates the chances differently

from us, merely because he does what, in his place, we should not do. Every man has tastes and propensities,

which he is disposed to gratify at a risk and expense which people of different temperaments and habits think

extravagant. "Why," says Horace, "does one brother like to lounge in the forum, to play in the Campus, and

to anoint himself in the baths, so well, that he would not put himself out of his way for all the wealth of the

richest plantations of the East; while the other toils from sunrise to sunset for the purpose of increasing his

fortune?" Horace attributes the diversity to the influence of the Genius and the natal star: and eighteen

hundred years have taught us only to disguise our ignorance beneath a more philosophical language.

We think, therefore, that the Westminster Reviewer, even if we admit his calculation of the chances to be

right, does not make out his case. But he appears to us to miscalculate chances more grossly than any person

who ever acted or speculated in this world. "It is for the happiness," says he, "of a member of the House of

Commons to govern well; for he never can tell that he is not close on the moment when misgovernment will

be terribly punished: if he was sure that he should be as lucky as his predecessors, it might be for his

happiness to misgovern; but he is not sure." Certainly a member of Parliament is not sure that he shall not be

torn in pieces by a mob, or guillotined by a revolutionary tribunal for his opposition to reform. Nor is the

Westminster Reviewer sure that he shall not be hanged for writing in favour of universal suffrage. We may

have democratical massacres. We may also have aristocratical proscriptions. It is not very likely, thank God,

that we should see either. But the radical, we think, runs as much danger as the aristocrat. As to our friend the

Westminster Reviewer, he, it must be owned, has as good a right as any man on his side, "Antoni gladios

contemnere." But take the man whose votes, ever since he has sate in Parliament, have been the most

uniformly bad, and oppose him to the man whose votes have been the most uniformly good. The Westminster

Reviewer would probably select Mr Sadler and Mr Hume. Now, does any rational man think,will the

Westminster Reviewer himself say,that Mr Sadler runs more risk of coming to a miserable end on account

of his public conduct than Mr Hume? Mr Sadler does not know that he is not close on the moment when he

will be made an example of; for Mr Sadler knows, if possible, less about the future than about the past. But

he has no more reason to expect that he shall be made an example of than to expect that London will be

swallowed up by an earthquake next spring; and it would be as foolish in him to act on the former supposition

as on the latter. There is a risk; for there is a risk of everything which does not involve a contradiction; but it

is a risk from which no man in his wits would give a shilling to be insured. Yet our Westminster Reviewer

tells us that this risk alone, apart from all considerations of religion, honour or benevolence, would, as a

matter of mere calculation, induce a wise member of the House of Commons to refuse any emoluments

We have hitherto been examining cases proposed by our opponent. It is now our turn to propose one; and we

A thief is condemned to be hanged. On the eve of the day fixed for the execution a turnkey enters his cell and

tells him that all is safe, that he has only to slip out, that his friends are waiting in the neighbourhood with

disguises, and that a passage is taken for him in an American packet. Now, it is clearly for the greatest

happiness of society that the thief should be hanged and the corrupt turnkey exposed and punished. Will the

Westminster Reviewer tell us that it is for the greatest happiness of the thief to summon the head jailer and

tell the whole story? Now, either it is for the greatest happiness of a thief to be hanged or it is not. If it is, then

the argument, by which the Westminster Reviewer attempts to prove that men do not promote their own

happiness by thieving, falls to the ground. If it is not, then there are men whose greatest happiness is at

To sum up our arguments shortly, we say that the "greatest happiness principle," as now stated, is

diametrically opposed to the principle stated in the Westminster Review three months ago.

We say that, if the "greatest happiness principle," as now stated, be sound, Mr Mill's Essay, and all other

works concerning Government which, like that Essay, proceed on the supposition that individuals may have

an interest opposed to the greatest happiness of society, are fundamentally erroneous.

We say that those who hold this principle to be sound must be prepared to maintain, either that monarchs and

aristocracies may be trusted to govern the community, or else that men cannot be trusted to follow their own

We say that, if men cannot be trusted to follow their own interest when that interest has been demonstrated to

them, then the Utilitarian arguments in favour of universal suffrage are good for nothing.

We say that the "greatest happiness principle" has not been proved; that it cannot be generally proved; that

even in the particular cases selected by the Reviewer it is not clear that the principle is true; and that many

cases might be stated in which the common sense of mankind would at once pronounce it to be false.

We now leave the Westminster Reviewer to alter and amend his "magnificent principle" as he thinks best.

Unlimited, it is false. Properly limited, it will be barren. The "greatest happiness principle" of the 1st of July,

as far as we could discern its meaning through a cloud of rodomontade, was an idle truism. The "greatest

happiness principle" of the 1st of October is, in the phrase of the American newspapers, "important if true."

But unhappily it is not true. It is not our business to conjecture what new maxim is to make the bones of

sages and patriots stir on the 1st of December. We can only say that, unless it be something infinitely more

ingenious than its two predecessors, we shall leave it unmolested. The Westminster Reviewer may, if he

pleases, indulge himself like Sultan Schahriar with espousing a rapid succession of virgin theories. But we

must beg to be excused from playing the part of the vizier who regularly attended on the day after the

The Westminster Reviewer charges us with urging it as an objection to the "greatest happiness principle" that

"it is included in the Christian morality." This is a mere fiction of his own. We never attacked the morality of

the Gospel. We blamed the Utilitarians for claiming the credit of a discovery, when they had merely stolen

that morality, and spoiled it in the stealing. They have taken the precept of Christ and left the motive; and

they demand the praise of a most wonderful and beneficial invention, when all that they have done has been

to make a most useful maxim useless by separating it from its sanction. On religious principles it is true that

every individual will best promote his own happiness by promoting the happiness of others. But if religious

considerations be left out of the question it is not true. If we do not reason on the supposition of a future state,

where is the motive? If we do reason on that supposition, where is the discovery?

The Westminster Reviewer tells us that "we wish to see the science of Government unsettled because we see

no prospect of a settlement which accords with our interests." His angry eagerness to have questions settled

resembles that of a judge in one of Dryden's playsthe Amphitryon, we thinkwho wishes to decide a

cause after hearing only one party, and, when he has been at last compelled to listen to the statement of the

defendant, flies into a passion, and exclaims, "There now, sir! See what you have done. The case was quite

clear a minute ago; and you must come and puzzle it!" He is the zealot of a sect. We are searchers after truth.

He wishes to have the question settled. We wish to have it sifted first. The querulous manner in which we

have been blamed for attacking Mr Mill's system, and propounding no system of our own, reminds us of the

horror with which that shallow dogmatist, Epicurus, the worst parts of whose nonsense the Utilitarians have

attempted to revive, shrank from the keen and searching scepticism of the second Academy.

It is not our fault that an experimental science of vast extent does not admit of being settled by a short

demonstration; that the subtilty of nature, in the moral as in the physical world, triumphs over the subtilty of

syllogism. The quack, who declares on affidavit that, by using his pills and attending to his printed directions,

hundreds who had been dismissed incurable from the hospitals have renewed their youth like the eagles, may,

perhaps, think that Sir Henry Halford, when he feels the pulses of patients, inquires about their symptoms,

and prescribes a different remedy to each, is unsettling the science of medicine for the sake of a fee.

If, in the course of this controversy, we have refrained from expressing any opinion respecting the political

institutions of England, it is not because we have not an opinion, or because we shrink from avowing it. The

Utilitarians, indeed, conscious that their boasted theory of government would not bear investigation, were

desirous to turn the dispute about Mr Mill's Essay into a dispute about the Whig party, rotten boroughs,

unpaid magistrates, and exofficio informations. When we blamed them for talking nonsense, they cried out

that they were insulted for being reformers,just as poor Ancient Pistol swore that the scars which he had

received from the cudgel of Fluellen were got in the Gallia wars. We, however, did not think it desirable to

mix up political questions, about which the public mind is violently agitated, with a great problem in moral

Our notions about Government are not, however, altogether unsettled. We have an opinion about

parliamentary reform, though we have not arrived at that opinion by the royal road which Mr Mill has opened

for the explorers of political science. As we are taking leave, probably for the last time, of this controversy,

we will state very concisely what our doctrines are. On some future occasion we may, perhaps, explain and

Our fervent wish, and we will add our sanguine hope, is that we may see such a reform of the House of

Commons as may render its votes the express image of the opinion of the middle orders of Britain. A

pecuniary qualification we think absolutely necessary; and in settling its amount, our object would be to draw

the line in such a manner that every decent farmer and shopkeeper might possess the elective franchise. We

should wish to see an end put to all the advantages which particular forms of property possess over other

forms, and particular portions of property over other equal portions. And this would content us. Such a

reform would, according to Mr Mill, establish an aristocracy of wealth, and leave the community without

protection and exposed to all the evils of unbridled power. Most willingly would we stake the whole

"The Law of Population; a Treatise in Six Books, in Disproof of the Superfecundity of Human Beings, and

developing the real Principle of their Increase". By Michael Thomas Sadler, M.P. 2 volumes 8vo. London:

we did not expect a good book from Mr Sadler: and it is well that we did not; for he has given us a very bad

one. The matter of his treatise is extraordinary; the manner more extraordinary still. His arrangement is

confused, his repetitions endless, his style everything which it ought not to be. Instead of saying what he has

to say with the perspicuity, the precision, and the simplicity in which consists the eloquence proper to

scientific writing, he indulges without measure in vague, bombastic declamation, made up of those fine

things which boys of fifteen admire, and which everybody, who is not destined to be a boy all his life, weeds

vigorously out of his compositions after five andtwenty. That portion of his two thick volumes which is

not made up of statistical tables, consists principally of ejaculations, apostrophes, metaphors, similes,all

the worst of their respective kinds. His thoughts are dressed up in this shabby finery with so much profusion

and so little discrimination, that they remind us of a company of wretched strolling players, who have

huddled on suits of ragged and faded tinsel, taken from a common wardrobe, and fitting neither their persons

nor their parts; and who then exhibit themselves to the laughing and pitying spectators, in a state of strutting,

ranting, painted, gilded beggary. "Oh, rare Daniels!" "Political economist, go and do thou likewise!" "Hear,

ye political economists and antipopulationists!" "Population, if not proscribed and worried down by the

Cerberean dogs of this wretched and cruel system, really does press against the level of the means of

subsistence, and still elevating that level, it continues thus to urge society through advancing stages, till at

length the strong and resistless hand of necessity presses the secret spring of human prosperity, and the

portals of Providence fly open, and disclose to the enraptured gaze the promised land of contented and

rewarded labour." These are specimens, taken at random, of Mr Sadler's eloquence. We could easily multiply

Much blank verse and much rhyme is also scattered through these volumes, sometimes rightly quoted,

sometimes wrongly,sometimes good, sometimes insufferable,sometimes taken from Shakspeare, and

sometimes, for aught we know, Mr Sadler's own. "Let man," cries the philosopher, "take heed how he rashly

"What myriads wait in destiny's dark womb, Doubtful of life or an eternal tomb! 'Tis his to blot them from

the book of fate, Or, like a second Deity, create; To dry the stream of being in its source, Or bid it, widening,

win its restless course; While, earth and heaven replenishing, the flood Rolls to its Ocean fount, and rests in

If these lines are not Mr Sadler's, we heartily beg his pardon for our suspiciona suspicion which, we

acknowledge, ought not to be lightly entertained of any human being. We can only say that we never met

with them before, and that we do not much care how long it may be before we meet with them, or with any

The spirit of this work is as bad as its style. We never met with a book which so strongly indicated that the

writer was in a good humour with himself, and in a bad humour with everybody else; which contained so

much of that kind of reproach which is vulgarly said to be no slander, and of that kind of praise which is

vulgarly said to be no commendation. Mr Malthus is attacked in language which it would be scarcely decent

to employ respecting Titus Oates. "Atrocious," "execrable," "blasphemous," and other epithets of the same

kind, are poured forth against that able, excellent, and honourable man, with a profusion which in the early

part of the work excites indignation, but after the first hundred pages, produces mere weariness and nausea.

In the preface, Mr Sadler excuses himself on the plea of haste. Two thirds of his book, he tells us, were

written in a few months. If any terms have escaped him which can be construed into personal disrespect, he

shall deeply regret that he had not more time to revise them. We must inform him that the tone of his book

required a very different apology; and that a quarter of a year, though it is a short time for a man to be

The imputation of being in a passion Mr Sadler will not disclaim. His is a theme, he tells us, on which "it

were impious to be calm;" and he boasts that, "instead of conforming to the candour of the present age, he has

imitated the honesty of preceding ones, in expressing himself with the utmost plainness and freedom

throughout." If Mr Sadler really wishes that the controversy about his new principle of population should be

carried on with all the license of the seventeenth century, we can have no personal objections. We are quite as

little afraid of a contest in which quarter shall be neither given nor taken as he can be. But we would advise

him seriously to consider, before he publishes the promised continuation of his work, whether he be not one

of that class of writers who stand peculiarly in need of the candour which he insults, and who would have

There is only one excuse for the extreme acrimony with which this book is written; and that excuse is but a

bad one. Mr Sadler imagines that the theory of Mr Malthus is inconsistent with Christianity, and even with

the purer forms of Deism. Now, even had this been the case, a greater degree of mildness and self command

than Mr Sadler has shown would have been becoming in a writer who had undertaken to defend the religion

of charity. But, in fact, the imputation which has been thrown on Mr Malthus and his followers is so absurd

as scarcely to deserve an answer. As it appears, however, in almost every page of Mr Sadler's book, we will

"It pronounces that there exists an evil in the principle of population; an evil, not accidental, but inherent; not

of occasional occurrence, but in perpetual operation; not light, transient, or mitigated, but productive of

miseries, compared with which all those inflicted by human institutions, that is to say, by the weakness and

wickedness of man, however instigated, are 'light;' an evil, finally, for which there is no remedy save one,

which had been long overlooked, and which is now enunciated in terms which evince anything rather than

confidence. It is a principle, moreover, preeminently bold, as well as 'clear.' With a presumption, to call it

by no fitter name, of which it may be doubted whether literature, heathen or Christian, furnishes a parallel, it

professes to trace this supposed evil to its source, 'the laws of nature, which are those of God;' thereby

implying, and indeed asserting, that the law by which the Deity multiplies his offspring, and that by which he

makes provision for their sustentation, are different, and, indeed, irreconcilable."

"This theory," he adds, "in the plain apprehension of the many, lowers the character of the Deity in that

attribute, which, as Rousseau has well observed, is the most essential to him, his goodness; or otherwise,

Now nothing is more certain than that there is physical and moral evil in the world. Whoever, therefore,

believes, as we do most firmly believe, in the goodness of God, must believe that there is no incompatibility

between the goodness of God and the existence of physical and moral evil. If, then, the goodness of God be

not incompatible with the existence of physical and moral evil, on what grounds does Mr Sadler maintain that

the goodness of God is incompatible with the law of population laid down by Mr Malthus?

Is there any difference between the particular form of evil which would be produced by overpopulation, and

other forms of evil which we know to exist in the world? It is, says Mr Sadler, not a light or transient evil, but

a great and permanent evil. What then? The question of the origin of evil is a question of ay or no,not a

question of more or less. If any explanation can be found by which the slightest inconvenience ever sustained

by any sentient being can be reconciled with the divine attribute of benevolence, that explanation will equally

apply to the most dreadful and extensive calamities that can ever afflict the human race. The difficulty arises

from an apparent contradiction in terms; and that difficulty is as complete in the case of a headache which

lasts for an hour as in the case of a pestilence which unpeoples an empire,in the case of the gust which

makes us shiver for a moment as in the case of the hurricane in which an Armada is cast away.

It is, according to Mr Sadler, an instance of presumption unparalleled in literature, heathen or Christian, to

trace an evil to "the laws of nature, which are those of God," as its source. Is not hydrophobia an evil? And is

it not a law of nature that hydrophobia should be communicated by the bite of a mad dog? Is not malaria an

evil? And is it not a law of nature that in particular situations the human frame should be liable to malaria?

We know that there is evil in the world. If it is not to be traced to the laws of nature, how did it come into the

world? Is it supernatural? And, if we suppose it to be supernatural, is not the difficulty of reconciling it with

the divine attributes as great as if we suppose it to be natural? Or, rather, what do the words natural and

Mr Sadler has attempted, in another part of his work, to meet these obvious arguments, by a distinction

"The scourges of human existence, as necessary regulators of the numbers of mankind, it is also agreed by

some, are not inconsistent with the wisdom or benevolence of the Governor of the universe; though such

think that it is a mere afterconcern to 'reconcile the undeniable state of the fact to the attributes we assign to

the Deity.' 'The purpose of the earthquake,' say they, 'the hurricane, the drought, or the famine, by which

thousands, and sometimes almost millions, of the human race, are at once overwhelmed, or left the victims of

lingering want, is certainly inscrutable.' How singular is it that a sophism like this, so false, as a mere

illustration, should pass for an argument, as it has long done! The principle of population is declared to be

naturally productive of evils to mankind, and as having that constant and manifest tendency to increase their

numbers beyond the means of their subsistence, which has produced the unhappy and disgusting

consequences so often enumerated. This is, then, its universal tendency or rule. But is there in Nature the

same constant tendency to these earthquakes, hurricanes, droughts, and famines by which so many myriads, if

not millions, are overwhelmed or reduced at once to ruin? No; these awful events are strange exceptions to

the ordinary course of things; their visitations are partial, and they occur at distant intervals of time. While

Religion has assigned to them a very solemn office, Philosophy readily refers them to those great and

benevolent principles of Nature by which the universe is regulated. But were there a constantly operating

tendency to these calamitous occurrences; did we feel the earth beneath us tremulous, and giving ceaseless

and certain tokens of the coming catastrophe of Nature; were the hurricane heard mustering its devastating

powers, and perpetually muttering around us; were the skies 'like brass,' without a cloud to produce one

genial drop to refresh the thirsty earth, and famine, consequently, visibly on the approach; I say, would such a

state of things, as resulting from the constant laws of Nature, be 'reconcilable with the attributes we assign to

the Deity,' or with any attributes which in these inventive days could be assigned to him, so as to represent

him as anything but the tormenter, rather than the kind benefactor, of his creatures? Life, in such a condition,

would be like the unceasingly threatened and miserable existence of Damocles at the table of Dionysius, and

Surely this is wretched trifling. Is it on the number of bad harvests, or of volcanic eruptions, that this great

question depends? Mr Sadler's piety, it seems, would be proof against one rainy summer, but would be

overcome by three or four in succession. On the coasts of the Mediterranean, where earthquakes are rare, he

would be an optimist. South America would make him a sceptic, and Java a decided Manichean. To say that

religion assigns a solemn office to these visitations is nothing to the purpose. Why was man so constituted as

to need such warnings? It is equally unmeaning to say that philosophy refers these events to benevolent

general laws of nature. In so far as the laws of nature produce evil, they are clearly not benevolent. They may

produce much good. But why is this good mixed with evil? The most subtle and powerful intellects have

been labouring for centuries to solve these difficulties. The true solution, we are inclined to think, is that

which has been rather suggested, than developed, by Paley and Butler. But there is not one solution which

will not apply quite as well to the evils of overpopulation as to any other evil. Many excellent people think

that it is presumptuous to meddle with such high questions at all, and that, though there doubtless is an

explanation, our faculties are not sufficiently enlarged to comprehend that explanation. This mode of getting

rid of the difficulty, again, will apply quite as well to the evils of over population as to any other evils. We

are sure that those who humbly confess their inability to expound the great enigma act more rationally and

more decorously than Mr Sadler, who tells us, with the utmost confidence, which are the means and which

the ends,which the exceptions and which the rules, in the government of the universe;who consents to

bear a little evil without denying the divine benevolence, but distinctly announces that a certain quantity of

dry weather or stormy weather would force him to regard the Deity as the tyrant of his creatures.

The great discovery by which Mr Sadler has, as he conceives, vindicated the ways of Providence is enounced

with all the pomp of capital letters. We must particularly beg that our readers will peruse it with attention.

"No one fact relative to the human species is more clearly ascertained, whether by general observation or

actual proof, than that their fecundity varies in different communities and countries. The principle which

effects this variation, without the necessity of those cruel and unnatural expedients so frequently adverted to,

constitutes what I presume to call THE LAW OF POPULATION; and that law may be thus briefly

"The preceding definition may be thus amplified and explained. Premising, as a mere truism, that marriages

under precisely similar circumstances will, on the average, be equally fruitful everywhere, I proceed to state,

first, that the prolificness of a given number of marriages will, all other circumstances being the same, vary in

proportion to the condensation of the population, so that that prolificness shall be greatest where the numbers

on an equal space are the fewest, and, on the contrary, the smallest where those numbers are the largest."

Mr Sadler, at setting out, abuses Mr Malthus for enouncing his theory in terms taken from the exact sciences.

"Applied to the mensuration of human fecundity," he tells us, "the most fallacious of all things is geometrical

demonstration;" and he again informs us that those "act an irrational and irrelevant part who affect to measure

the mighty depth of God's mercies by their arithmetic, and to demonstrate, by their geometrical ratios, that it

is inadequate to receive and contain the efflux of that fountain of life which is in Him."

It appears, however, that it is not to the use of mathematical words, but only to the use of those words in their

right senses that Mr Sadler objects. The law of inverse variation, or inverse proportion, is as much a part of

mathematical science as the law of geometric progression. The only difference in this respect between Mr

Malthus and Mr Sadler is, that Mr Malthus knows what is meant by geometric progression, and that Mr

Sadler has not the faintest notion of what is meant by inverse variation. Had he understood the proposition

which he has enounced with so much pomp, its ludicrous absurdity must at once have flashed on his mind.

Let it be supposed that there is a tract in the back settlements of America, or in New South Wales, equal in

size to London, with only a single couple, a man and his wife, living upon it. The population of London, with

its immediate suburbs, is now probably about a million and a half. The average fecundity of a marriage in

London is, as Mr Sadler tells us 2.35. How many children will the woman in the back settlements bear

according to Mr Sadler's theory? The solution of the problem is easy. As the population in this tract in the

back settlements is to the population of London, so will be the number of children born from a marriage in

London to the number of children born from the marriage of this couple in the back settlements. That is to

The lady will have 1,762,500 children: a large "efflux of the fountain of life," to borrow Mr Sadler's sonorous

But let us, instead of putting cases of our own, look at some of those which Mr Sadler has brought forward in

support of his theory. The following table, he tells us, exhibits a striking proof of the truth of his main

position. It seems to us to prove only that Mr Sadler does not know what inverse proportion means.

Cape of Good Hope 1 5.48 North America 4 5.22 Russia in Europe 23 4.94 Denmark 73 4.89 Prussia 100

Is 1 to 160 as 3.66 to 5.48? If Mr Sadler's principle were just, the number of children produced by a marriage

at the Cape would be, not 5.48, but very near 600. Or take America and France. Is 4 to 140 as 4.22 to 5.22?

The number of births to a marriage in North America ought, according to this proportion, to be about 150.

50 100 2 420 100 150 9 396 150 200 16 390 200 250 4 388 250 300 5 378 300 350 3 353 500 600 2 331 4000

"Now, I think it quite reasonable to conclude, that, were there not another document in existence relative to

this subject, the facts thus deduced from the census of England are fully sufficient to demonstrate the

position, that the fecundity of human beings varies inversely as their numbers. How, I ask, can it be evaded?"

What, we ask, is there to evade? Is 246 to 420 as 50 to 4000? Is 331 to 396 as 100 to 500? If the law

propounded by Mr Sadler were correct, the births to a hundred marriages in the least populous part of

England, would be 246 x 4000 / 50, that is 19,680,nearly two hundred children to every mother. But we

will not carry on these calculations. The absurdity of Mr Sadler's proposition is so palpable that it is

unnecessary to select particular instances. Let us see what are the extremes of population and fecundity in

wellknown countries. The space which Mr Sadler generally takes is a square mile. The population at the

Cape of Good Hope is, according to him, one to the square mile. That of London is two hundred thousand to

the square mile. The number of children at the Cape, Mr Sadler informs us, is 5.48 to a marriage. In London,

he states it at 2.35 to a marriage. Now how can that of which all the variations lie between 2.35 and 5.48 vary,

either directly or inversely, as that which admits of all the variations between one and two hundred thousand?

Mr Sadler evidently does not know the meaning of the word proportion. A million is a larger quantity than

ten. A hundred is a larger quantity than five. Mr Sadler thinks, therefore, that there is no impropriety in

saying that a hundred is to five as a million is to ten, or in the inverse ratio of ten to a million. He proposes to

prove that the fecundity of marriages varies in inverse proportion to the density of the population. But all that

he attempts to prove is that, while the population increases from one to a hundred and sixty on the square

mile, the fecundity will diminish from 5.48 to 3.66; and that again, while the population increases from one

hundred and sixty to two hundred thousand on the square mile, the fecundity will diminish from 3.66 to 2.35.

The proposition which Mr Sadler enounces, without understanding the words which he uses, would indeed, if

it could be proved, set us at ease as to the dangers of overpopulation. But it is, as we have shown, a

proposition so grossly absurd that it is difficult for any man to keep his countenance while he repeats it. The

utmost that Mr Sadler has ever attempted to prove is this,that the fecundity of the human race diminishes

as population becomes more condensed,but that the diminution of fecundity bears a very small ratio to the

increase of population,so that, while the population on a square mile is multiplied two

Does this principle vindicate the honour of God? Does it hold out any new hope or comfort to man? Not at

all. We pledge ourselves to show, with the utmost strictness of reasoning, from Mr Sadler's own principles,

and from facts of the most notorious description, that every consequence which follows from the law of

geometrical progression, laid down by Mr Malthus, will follow from the law, miscalled a law of inverse

London is the most thickly peopled spot of its size in the known world. Therefore the fecundity of the

population of London must, according to Mr Sadler, be less than the fecundity of human beings living on any

other spot of equal size. Mr Sadler tells us, that "the ratios of mortality are influenced by the different degrees

in which the population is condensated; and that, other circumstances being similar, the relative number of

deaths in a thinlypopulated, or country district, is less than that which takes place in towns, and in towns of

a moderate size less again than that which exists in large and populous cities." Therefore the mortality in

London must, according to him, be greater than in other places. But, though, according to Mr Sadler, the

fecundity is less in London than elsewhere, and though the mortality is greater there than elsewhere, we find

that even in London the number of births greatly exceeds the number of deaths. During the ten years which

ended with 1820, there were fifty thousand more baptisms than burials within the bills of mortality. It

follows, therefore, that, even within London itself, an increase of the population is taking place by internal

Now, if the population of a place in which the fecundity is less and the mortality greater than in other places

still goes on increasing by propagation, it follows that in other places the population will increase, and

increase still faster. There is clearly nothing in Mr Sadler's boasted law of fecundity which will keep the

population from multiplying till the whole earth is as thick with human beings as St Giles's parish. If Mr

Sadler denies this, he must hold that, in places less thickly peopled than London, marriages may be less

fruitful than in London, which is directly contrary to his own principles; or that in places less thickly peopled

than London, and similarly situated, people will die faster than in London, which is again directly contrary to

his own principles. Now, if it follows, as it clearly does follow, from Mr Sadler's own doctrines, that the

human race might be stowed together by three or four hundred to the acre, and might still, as far as the

principle of propagation is concerned, go on increasing, what advantage, in a religious or moral point of view,

has his theory over that of Mr Malthus? The principle of Mr Malthus, says Mr Sadler, leads to consequences

of the most frightful description. Be it so. But do not all these consequences spring equally from his own

principle? Revealed religion condemns Mr Malthus. Be it so. But Mr Sadler must share in the reproach of

heresy. The theory of Mr Malthus represents the Deity as a Dionysius hanging the sword over the heads of

his trembling slaves. Be it so. But under what rhetorical figure are we to represent the Deity of Mr Sadler?

A man who wishes to serve the cause of religion ought to hesitate long before he stakes the truth of religion

on the event of a controversy respecting facts in the physical world. For a time he may succeed in making a

theory which he dislikes unpopular by persuading the public that it contradicts the Scriptures and is

inconsistent with the attributes of the Deity. But, if at last an overwhelming force of evidence proves this

maligned theory to be true, what is the effect of the arguments by which the objector has attempted to prove

that it is irreconcilable with natural and revealed religion? Merely this, to make men infidels. Like the

Israelites, in their battle with the Philistines, he has presumptuously and without warrant brought down the

ark of God into the camp as a means of ensuring victory:and the consequence of this profanation is that,

In every age the Church has been cautioned against this fatal and impious rashness by its most illustrious

members,by the fervid Augustin, by the subtle Aquinas, by the allaccomplished Pascal. The warning has

been given in vain. That close alliance which, under the disguise of the most deadly enmity, has always

subsisted between fanaticism and atheism is still unbroken. At one time, the cry was,"If you hold that the

earth moves round the sun, you deny the truth of the Bible." Popes, conclaves, and religious orders, rose up

against the Copernican heresy. But, as Pascal said, they could not prevent the earth from moving, or

themselves from moving along with it. One thing, however, they could do, and they did. They could teach

numbers to consider the Bible as a collection of old women's stories which the progress of civilisation and

knowledge was refuting one by one. They had attempted to show that the Ptolemaic system was as much a

part of Christianity as the resurrection of the dead. Was it strange, then, that when the Ptolemaic system

became an object of ridicule to every man of education in Catholic countries, the doctrine of the resurrection

should be in peril? In the present generation, and in our own country, the prevailing system of geology has

been, with equal folly, attacked on the ground that it is inconsistent with the Mosaic dates. And here we have

Mr Sadler, out of his especial zeal for religion, first proving that the doctrine of superfecundity is

irreconcilable with the goodness of God, and then laying down principles, and stating facts, from which the

doctrine of superfecundity necessarily follows. This blundering piety reminds us of the adventures of a

certain missionary who went to convert the inhabitants of Madagascar. The good father had an audience of

the king, and began to instruct his majesty in the history of the human race as given in the Scriptures. "Thus,

sir," said he, "was woman made out of the rib of man, and ever since that time a woman has had one rib more

than a man." "Surely, father, you must be mistaken there," said the king. "Mistaken!" said the missionary. "It

is an indisputable fact. My faith upon it! My life upon it!" The good man had heard the fact asserted by his

nurse when he was a child,had always considered it as a strong confirmation of the Scriptures, and fully

believed it without having ever thought of verifying it. The king ordered a man and woman, the leanest that

could be found, to be brought before him, and desired his spiritual instructor to count their ribs. The father

counted over and over, upward and downward, and still found the same number in both. He then cleared his

throat, stammered, stuttered, and began to assure the king that though he had committed a little error in

saying that a woman had more ribs than a man, he was quite right in saying that the first woman was made

out of the rib of the first man. "How can I tell that?" said the king. "You come to me with a strange story

which you say is revealed to you from heaven. I have already made you confess that one half of it is a lie: and

We have shown that Mr Sadler's theory, if it be true, is as much a theory of superfecundity as that of Mr

Malthus. But it is not true. And from Mr Sadler's own tables we will prove that it is not true.

50 100 2 420 100 150 9 396 150 200 16 390 200 250 4 388 250 300 5 378 300 350 3 353 500 600 2 331 4000

Having given this table, he begins, as usual, to boast and triumph. "Were there not another document on the

subject in existence," says he, "the facts thus deduced from the census of England are sufficient to

demonstrate the position, that the fecundity of human beings varies inversely as their numbers." In no case

would these facts demonstrate that the fecundity of human beings varies inversely as their numbers in the

right sense of the words inverse variation. But certainly they would, "if there were no other document in

existence," appear to indicate something like what Mr Sadler means by inverse variation. Unhappily for him,

however, there are other documents in existence; and he has himself furnished us with them. We will extract

Showing the Operation of the Law of Population in the different Hundreds of the County of Lancaster.

(In the following table the name of the Hundred is followed in order by: Population on each Square Mile.

Square Miles. Population in 1821, exclusive of Towns of separate Jurisdiction. Marriages from 1811 to 1821.

Lonsdale : 96 : 441 : 42,486 : 3,651 : 16,129 : 442 Almondness : 267 : 228 : 60,930 : 3,670 : 15,228 : 415

Leyland : 354 : 126 : 44,583 : 2,858 : 11,182 : 391 West Derby : 409 : 377 : 154,040 : 24,182 : 86,407 : 357

Blackburn : 513 : 286 : 146,608 : 10,814 : 31,463 : 291 Salford : 869 : 373 : 322,592 : 40,143 : 114,941 : 286

Mr Sadler rejoices much over this table. The results, he says, have surprised himself; and, indeed, as we shall

The result of his inquiries with respect to France he presents in the following table:

4 to 5 2 5130 3 to 4 3 4372 2 to 3 30 4250 1 to 2 44 4234 .06 to 1 5 4146 .06 1 2557

Then comes the shout of exaltation as regularly as the Gloria Patri at the end of a Psalm. "Is there any

possibility of gainsaying the conclusions these facts force upon us; namely that the fecundity of marriages is

Certainly these tables, taken separately, look well for Mr Sadler's theory. He must be a bungling gamester

who cannot win when he is suffered to pack the cards his own way. We must beg leave to shuffle them a

little; and we will venture to promise our readers that some curious results will follow from the operation. In

nine counties of England, says Mr Sadler, in which the population is from 100 to 150 on the square mile, the

births to 100 marriages are 396. He afterwards expresses some doubt as to the accuracy of the documents

from which this estimate has been formed, and rates the number of births as high as 414. Let him take his

In the table which we have quoted, numbered lxiv., he tells us that in Almondness, where the population is

267 to the square mile, there are 415 births to 100 marriages. The population of Almondness is twice as thick

as the population of the nine counties referred to in the other table. Yet the number of births to a marriage is

Once more, he tells us that in three counties, in which the population was from 300 to 350 on the square mile,

the births to 100 marriages were 353. He afterwards rates them at 375. Again we say, let him take his choice.

But from his table of the population of Lancashire it appears that, in the hundred of Leyland, where the

population is 354 to the square mile, the number of births to 100 marriages is 391. Here again we have the

Let us now shuffle the censuses of England and France together. In two English counties which contain from

50 to 100 inhabitants on the square mile, the births to 100 marriages are, according to Mr Sadler, 420. But in

fortyfour departments of France, in which there are from one to two hecatares to each inhabitant, that is to

say, in which the population is from 125 to 250 or rather more, to the square mile, the number of births to 100

Again, in five departments of France in which there is less than one hecatare to each inhabitant, that is to say,

in which the population is more than 250 to the square mile, the number of births to 100 marriages is 414 and

a fraction. But in the four counties of England in which the population is from 200 to 250 on the square mile,

the number of births to 100 marriages is, according to one of Mr Sadler's tables, only 388, and by his very

Mr Sadler gives us a long table of all the towns of England and Ireland, which, he tells us, irrefragably

demonstrates his principle. We assert, and will prove, that these tables are alone sufficient to upset his whole

It is very true that, in the great towns the number of births to a marriage appears to be smaller than in the less

populous towns. But we learn some other facts from these tables which we should be glad to know how Mr

Sadler will explain. We find that the fecundity in towns of fewer than 3000 inhabitants is actually much

greater than the average fecundity of the kingdom, and that the fecundity in towns of between 3000 and 4000

inhabitants is at least as great as the average fecundity of the kingdom. The average fecundity of a marriage

in towns of fewer than 3000 inhabitants is about four; in towns of between 3000 and 4000 inhabitants it is

3.60. Now, the average fecundity of England, when it contained only 160 inhabitants to a square mile, and

when, therefore, according to the new law of population, the fecundity must have been greater than it now is,

was only, according to Mr Sadler, 3.66 to a marriage. To proceed,the fecundity of a marriage in the

English towns of between 4000 and 5000 inhabitants is stated at 3.56. But, when we turn to Mr Sadler's table

of counties, we find the fecundity of a marriage in Warwickshire and Staffordshire rated at only 3.48, and in

These facts disprove Mr Sadler's principle; and the fact on which he lays so much stressthat the fecundity

is less in the great towns than in the small townsdoes not tend in any degree to prove his principle. There is

not the least reason to believe that the population is more dense, ON A GIVEN SPACE, in London or

Manchester than in a town of 4000 inhabitants. But it is quite certain that the population is more dense in a

town of 4000 inhabitants than in Warwickshire or Lancashire. That the fecundity of Manchester is less than

the fecundity of Sandwich or Guildford is a circumstance which has nothing whatever to do with Mr Sadler's

theory. But that the fecundity of Sandwich is greater than the average fecundity of Kent,that the fecundity

of Guildford is greater than the average fecundity of Surrey,as from his own tables appears to be the

We need not here examine why it is that the human race is less fruitful in great cities than in small towns or in

the open country. The fact has long been notorious. We are inclined to attribute it to the same causes which

tend to abridge human life in great cities,to general sickliness and want of tone, produced by close air and

sedentary employments. Thus far, and thus far only, we agree with Mr Sadler, that, when population is

crowded together in such masses that the general health and energy of the frame are impaired by the

condensation, and by the habits attending on the condensation, then the fecundity of the race diminishes. But

this is evidently a check of the same class with war, pestilence, and famine. It is a check for the operation of

That any condensation which does not affect the general health will affect fecundity, is not only not

Mr Sadler passes on to Prussia, and sums up his information respecting that country as follows:

(In the following table numbers appear in the order: Inhabitants on a Square Mile, German. Number of

Provinces. Births to 100 Marriages, 1754. Births to 100 Marriages, 1784. Births to 100 Marriages, Busching.)

Under 1000 : 2 : 434 : 472 : 503 1000 to 2000 : 4 : 414 : 455 : 454 2000 to 3000 : 6 : 384 : 424 : 426 3000 to

"Thus is the law of population deduced from the registers of Prussia also: and were the argument to pause

here, it is conclusive. The results obtained from the registers of this and the preceding countries, exhibiting,

as they do most clearly, the principle of human increase, it is utterly impossible should have been the work of

chance; on the contrary, the regularity with which the facts class themselves in conformity with that principle,

and the striking analogy which the whole of them bear to each other, demonstrate equally the design of

We are sorry to disturb Mr Sadler's complacency. But, in our opinion, this table completely disproves his

whole principle. If we read the columns perpendicularly, indeed, they seem to be in his favour. But how

stands the case if we read horizontally? Does Mr Sadler believe that, during the thirty years which elapsed

between 1754 and 1784, the population of Prussia had been diminishing? No fact in history is better

ascertained than that, during the long peace which followed the seven years' war, it increased with great

rapidity. Indeed, if the fecundity were what Mr Sadler states it to have been, it must have increased with great

rapidity. Yet, the ratio of births to marriages is greater in 1784 than in 1754, and that in every province. It is,

therefore, perfectly clear that the fecundity does not diminish whenever the density of the population

Showing the Estimated Prolificness of Marriages in England at the close of the Seventeenth Century.

(In the following table the name of the Place is followed in order by: Number of Inhabitants. One Annual

Marriage, to. Number of Marriages. Children to one Marriage. Total Number of Births.

London : 530,000 : 106 : 5,000 : 4. : 20,000 Large Towns : 870,000 : 128 : 6,800 : 4.5 : 30,000 Small Towns

Standing by itself, this table, like most of the others, seems to support Mr Sadler's theory. But surely London,

at the close of the seventeenth century, was far more thickly peopled than the kingdom of England now is.

Yet the fecundity in London at the close of the seventeenth century was 4; and the average fecundity of the

whole kingdom now is not more, according to Mr Sadler, than 3 1/2. Then again, the large towns in 1700

were far more thickly peopled than Westmoreland and the North Riding of Yorkshire now are. Yet the

fecundity in those large towns was then 4.5. And Mr Sadler tells us that it is now only 4.2 in Westmoreland

It is scarcely necessary to say anything about the censuses of the Netherlands, as Mr Sadler himself confesses

that there is some difficulty in reconciling them with his theory, and helps out his awkward explanation by

supposing, quite gratuitously, as it seems to us, that the official documents are inaccurate. The argument

which he has drawn from the United States will detain us but for a very short time. He has not told

us,perhaps he had not the means of telling us,what proportion the number of births in the different parts

of that country bears to the number of marriages. He shows that in the thinly peopled states the number of

children bears a greater proportion to the number of grownup people than in the old states; and this, he

conceives, is a sufficient proof that the condensation of the population is unfavourable to fecundity. We deny

the inference altogether. Nothing can be more obvious than the explanation of the phenomenon. The back

settlements are for the most part peopled by emigration from the old states; and emigrants are almost always

breeders. They are almost always vigorous people in the prime of life. Mr Sadler himself, in another part of

his book, in which he tries very unsuccessfully to show that the rapid multiplication of the people of America

is principally owing to emigration from Europe, states this fact in the plainest manner:

"Nothing is more certain, than that emigration is almost universally supplied by 'single persons in the

beginning of mature life;' nor, secondly, that such persons, as Dr Franklin long ago asserted, 'marry and raise

"Nor is this all. It is not more true, that emigrants, generally speaking, consist of individuals in the prime of

life, than that 'they are the most active and vigorous' of that age, as Dr Seybert describes them to be. They are,

as it respects the principle at issue, a select class, even compared with that of their own age, generally

considered. Their very object in leaving their native countries is to settle in life, a phrase that needs no

explanation; and they do so. No equal number of human beings, therefore, have ever given so large or rapid

It is perfectly clear that children are more numerous in the back settlements of America than in the maritime

states, not because unoccupied land makes people prolific, but because the most prolific people go to the

Mr Sadler having, as he conceives, fully established his theory of population by statistical evidence, proceeds

to prove, "that it is in unison, or rather required by the principles of physiology." The difference between

"In pursuing this part of my subject, I must begin by reminding the reader of the difference between those

who hold the superfecundity of mankind and myself, in regard to those principles which will form the basis

of the present argument. They contend, that production precedes population; I, on the contrary, maintain that

population precedes, and is indeed the cause of, production. They teach that man breeds up to the capital, or

in proportion to the abundance of the food, he possesses: I assert, that he is comparatively sterile when he is

wealthy, and that he breeds in proportion to his poverty; not meaning, however, by that poverty, a state of

privation approaching to actual starvation, any more than, I suppose, they would contend, that extreme and

culpable excess is the grand patron of population. In a word, they hold that a state of ease and affluence is the

great promoter of prolificness. I maintain that a considerable degree of labour, and even privation, is a more

To prove this point, he quotes Aristotle, Hippocrates, Dr Short, Dr Gregory, Dr Perceval, M. Villermi, Lord

Bacon, and Rousseau. We will not dispute about it; for it seems quite clear to us that if he succeeds in

establishing it he overturns his own theory. If men breed in proportion to their poverty, as he tells us

here,and at the same time breed in inverse proportion to their numbers, as he told us before,it

necessarily follows that the poverty of men must be in inverse proportion to their numbers. Inverse

proportion, indeed, as we have shown, is not the phrase which expresses Mr Sadler's meaning. To speak more

correctly, it follows, from his own positions, that, if one population be thinner than another, it will also be

poorer. Is this the fact? Mr Sadler tells us, in one of those tables which we have already quoted, that in the

United States the population is four to a square mile, and the fecundity 5.22 to a marriage, and that in Russia

the population is twentythree to a square mile, and the fecundity 4.94 to a marriage. Is the North American

labourer poorer than the Russian boor? If not, what becomes of Mr Sadler's argument?

The most decisive proof of Mr Sadler's theory, according to him, is that which he has kept for the last. It is

derived from the registers of the English Peerage. The peers, he says, and says truly, are the class with respect

"Touching their NUMBER, this has been accurately known and recorded ever since the order has existed in

the country. For several centuries past, the addition to it of a single individual has been a matter of public

interest and notoriety: this hereditary honour conferring not personal dignity merely, but important privileges,

and being almost always identified with great wealth and influence. The records relating to it are kept with

the most scrupulous attention, not only by heirs and expectants, but they are appealed to by more distant

connections, as conferring distinction on all who can claim such affinity. Hence there are few disputes

concerning successions to this rank, but such as go back to very remote periods. In later times, the marriages,

births, and deaths, of the nobility, have not only been registered by and known to those personally interested,

but have been published periodically, and, consequently, subject to perpetual correction and revision; while

many of the most powerful motives which can influence the human mind conspire to preserve these records

from the slightest falsification. Compared with these, therefore, all other registers, or reports, whether of

Mr Sadler goes on to tell us that the peers are a marrying class, and that their general longevity proves them

to be a healthy class. Still peerages often become extinct;and from this fact he infers that they are a sterile

class. So far, says he, from increasing in geometrical progression, they do not even keep up their numbers.

"Thus," says he, "in all ages of the world, and in every nation of it, have the highest ranks of the community

been the most sterile, and the lowest the most prolific. As it respects our own country, from the lowest grade

of society, the Irish peasant, to the highest, the British peer, this remains a conspicuous truth; and the

regulation of the degree of fecundity conformably to this principle, through the intermediate gradations of

society, constitutes one of the features of the system developed in these pages."

We take the issue which Mr Sadler has himself offered. We agree with him, that the registers of the English

Peerage are of far higher authority than any other statistical documents. We are content that by those registers

his principle should be judged. And we meet him by positively denying his facts. We assert that the English

nobles are not only not a sterile, but an eminently prolific, part of the community. Mr Sadler concludes that

they are sterile, merely because peerages often become extinct. Is this the proper way of ascertaining the

point? Is it thus that he avails himself of those registers on the accuracy and fulness of which he descants so

largely? Surely his right course would have been to count the marriages, and the number of births in the

It appears from the last edition of Debrett's "Peerage", published in 1828, that there were at that time 287

peers of the United Kingdom, who had been married once or oftener. The whole number of marriages

contracted by these 287 peers was 333. The number of children by these marriages was 1437,more than

five to a peer,more than 4.3 to a marriage,more, that is to say, than the average number in those counties

of England in which, according to Mr Sadler's own statement, the fecundity is the greatest.

But this is not all. These marriages had not, in 1828, produced their full effect. Some of them had been very

lately contracted. In a very large proportion of them there was every probability of additional issue. To allow

for this probability, we may safely add one to the average which we have already obtained, and rate the

fecundity of a noble marriage in England at 5.3;higher than the fecundity which Mr Sadler assigns to the

people of the United States. Even if we do not make this allowance, the average fecundity of marriages of

peers is higher by onefifth than the average fecundity of marriages throughout the kingdom. And this is the

sterile class! This is the class which "Nature has interdicted from increasing!" The evidence to which Mr

Sadler has himself appealed proves that his principle is false,utterly false,wildly and extravagantly false.

It proves that a class, living during half of every year in the most crowded population in the world, breeds

faster than those who live in the country; that the class which enjoys the greatest degree of luxury and ease

breeds faster than the class which undergoes labour and privation. To talk a little in Mr Sadler's style, we

must own that we are ourselves surprised at the results which our examination of the peerage has brought out.

We certainly should have thought that the habits of fashionable life, and long residence even in the most airy

parts of so great a city as London, would have been more unfavourable to the fecundity of the higher orders

Peerages, it is true, often become extinct. But it is quite clear, from what we have stated, that this is not

because peeresses are barren. There is no difficulty in discovering what the causes really are. In the first

place, most of the titles of our nobles are limited to heirs male; so that, though the average fecundity of a

noble marriage is upwards of five, yet, for the purpose of keeping up a peerage, it cannot be reckoned at

much more than two and a half. Secondly, though the peers are, as Mr Sadler says, a marrying class, the

younger sons of peers are decidedly not a marrying class; so that a peer, though he has at least as great a

chance of having a son as his neighbours, has less chance than they of having a collateral heir.

We have now disposed, we think, of Mr Sadler's principle of population. Our readers must, by this time, be

pretty well satisfied as to his qualifications for setting up theories of his own. We will, therefore, present them

with a few instances of the skill and fairness which he shows when he undertakes to pull down the theories of

other men. The doctrine of Mr Malthus, that population, if not checked by want, by vice, by excessive

mortality, or by the prudent selfdenial of individuals, would increase in a geometric progression, is, in Mr

"It may at once be denied," says he, "that human increase proceeds geometrically; and for this simple but

decisive reason, that the existence of a geometrical ratio of increase in the works of nature is neither true nor

possible. It would fling into utter confusion all order, time, magnitude, and space."

This is as curious a specimen of reasoning as any that has been offered to the world since the days when

theories were founded on the principle that nature abhors a vacuum. We proceed a few pages further,

however; and we then find that geometric progression is unnatural only in those cases in which Mr Malthus

conceives that it exists; and that, in all cases in which Mr Malthus denies the existence of a geometric ratio,

Mr Malthus holds that subsistence will increase only in an arithmetical ratio. "As far as nature has to do with

the question," says Mr Sadler, "men might, for instance, plant twice the number of peas, and breed from a

double number of the same animals, with equal prospect of their multiplication." Now, if Mr Sadler thinks

that, as far as nature is concerned, four sheep will double as fast as two, and eight as fast as four, how can he

deny that the geometrical ratio of increase does exist in the works of nature? Or has he a definition of his own

Mr Malthus, and those who agree with him, have generally referred to the United States, as a country in

which the human race increases in a geometrical ratio, and have fixed on thirtyfive years as the term in

which the population of that country doubles itself. Mr Sadler contends that it is physically impossible for a

people to double in twentyfive years; nay, that thirtyfive years is far too short a period,that the

Americans do not double by procreation in less than fortyseven years,and that the rapid increase of their

Emigration has certainly had some effect in increasing the population of the United States. But so great has

the rate of that increase been that, after making full allowance for the effect of emigration, there will be a

residue, attributable to procreation alone, amply sufficient to double the population in twentyfive years.

"There were, of white inhabitants, in the whole of the United States in 1790, 3,093,111; in 1800, 4,309,656;

in 1810, 5,862,093; and in 1820, 7,861,710. The increase, in the first term, being 39 per cent.; that in the

second, 36 per cent.; and that in the third and last, 33 per cent. It is superfluous to say, that it is utterly

impossible to deduce the geometric theory of human increase, whatever be the period of duplication, from

Mr Sadler is a bad arithmetician. The increase in the last term is not as he states it, 33 per cent., but more than

34 per cent. Now, an increase of 32 per cent. in ten years, is more than sufficient to double the population in

twentyfive years. And there is, we think, very strong reason to believe that the white population of the

Our reason is this. There is in the United States a class of persons whose numbers are not increased by

emigration,the negro slaves. During the interval which elapsed between the census of 1810 and the census

of 1820, the change in their numbers must have been produced by procreation, and by procreation alone.

Their situation, though much happier than that of the wretched beings who cultivate the sugar plantations of

Trinidad and Demerara, cannot be supposed to be more favourable to health and fecundity than that of free

labourers. In 1810, the slavetrade had been but recently abolished; and there were in consequence many

more male than female slaves,a circumstance, of course, very unfavourable to procreation. Slaves are

perpetually passing into the class of freemen; but no freeman ever descends into servitude; so that the census

We find, by the census of 1810, that the number of slaves in the Union was then 1,191,000. In 1820, they had

increased to 1,538,000. That is to say, in ten years, they had increased 29 per cent.within three per cent. of

that rate of increase which would double their numbers in twentyfive years. We may, we think, fairly

calculate that, if the female slaves had been as numerous as the males, and if no manumissions had taken

place, the census of the slave population would have exhibited an increase of 32 per cent. in ten years.

If we are right in fixing on 32 per cent. as the rate at which the white population of America increases by

procreation in ten years, it will follow that, during the last ten years of the eighteenth century, nearly

onesixth of the increase was the effect of emigration; from 1800 to 1810, about oneninth; and from 1810 to

1820, about oneseventeenth. This is what we should have expected; for it is clear that, unless the number of

emigrants be constantly increasing, it must, as compared with the resident population, be relatively

decreasing. The number of persons added to the population of the United States by emigration, between 1810

and 1820, would be nearly 120,000. From the data furnished by Mr Sadler himself, we should be inclined to

"Dr Seybert says, that the passengers to ten of the principal ports of the United States, in the year 1817,

amounted to 22,235; of whom 11,977 were from Great Britain and Ireland; 4164 from Germany and Holland;

1245 from France; 58 from Italy, 2901 from the British possessions in North America; 1569 from the West

Indies; and from all other countries, 321. These, however, we may conclude, with the editor of Styles's

We have not the honour of knowing either Dr Seybert or the editor of Styles's Register. We cannot, therefore,

decide on their respective claims to our confidence so peremptorily as Mr Sadler thinks fit to do. Nor can we

agree to what Mr Sadler very gravely assigns as a reason for disbelieving Dr Seyberts's testimony. "Such

accounts," he says, "if not wilfully exaggerated, must always fall short of the truth." It would be a curious

question of casuistry to determine what a man ought to do in a case in which he cannot tell the truth except by

being guilty of wilful exaggeration. We will, however, suppose, with Mr Sadler, that Dr Seybert, finding

himself compelled to choose between two sins, preferred telling a falsehood to exaggerating; and that he has

consequently underrated the number of emigrants. We will take it at double of the Doctor's estimate, and

suppose that, in 1817, 45,000 Europeans crossed to the United States. Now, it must be remembered that the

year 1817 was a year of the severest and most general distress all over Europe,a year of scarcity

everywhere, and of cruel famine in some places. There can, therefore, be no doubt that the emigration of

1817 was very far above the average, probably more than three times that of an ordinary year. Till the year

1815, the war rendered it almost impossible to emigrate to the United States either from England or from the

Continent. If we suppose the average emigration of the remaining years to have been 16,000, we shall

probably not be much mistaken. In 1818 and 1819, the number was certainly much beyond that average; in

1815 and 1816, probably much below it. But, even if we were to suppose that, in every year from the peace to

1820, the number of emigrants had been as high as we have supposed it to be in 1817, the increase by

procreation among the white inhabitants of the United States would still appear to be about 30 per cent. in ten

Mr Sadler acknowledges that Cobbett exaggerates the number of emigrants when he states it at 150,000 a

year. Yet even this estimate, absurdly great as it is, would not be sufficient to explain the increase of the

population of the United States on Mr Sadler's principles. He is, he tells us, "convinced that doubling in 35

years is a far more rapid duplication than ever has taken place in that country from procreation only." An

increase of 20 per cent. in ten years, by procreation, would therefore be the very utmost that he would allow

to be possible. We have already shown, by reference to the census of the slave population, that this doctrine is

quite absurd. And, if we suppose it to be sound, we shall be driven to the conclusion that above eight hundred

thousand people emigrated from Europe to the United States in a space of little more than five years. The

whole increase of the white population from 1810 to 1820 was within a few hundreds of 2,000,000. If we are

to attribute to procreation only 20 per cent. on the number returned by the census of 1810, we shall have

about 830,000 persons to account for in some other way;and to suppose that the emigrants who went to

America between the peace of 1815 and the census of 1820, with the children who were born to them there,

We could say much more; but we think it quite unnecessary at present. We have shown that Mr Sadler is

careless in the collection of facts,that he is incapable of reasoning on facts when he has collected

them,that he does not understand the simplest terms of science,that he has enounced a proposition of

which he does not know the meaning,that the proposition which he means to enounce, and which he tries

to prove, leads directly to all those consequences which he represents as impious and immoral,and that,

from the very documents to which he has himself appealed, it may be demonstrated that his theory is false.

We may, perhaps, resume the subject when his next volume appears. Meanwhile, we hope that he will delay

its publication until he has learned a little arithmetic, and unlearned a great deal of eloquence.

"A Refutation of an Article in the Edinburgh Review (No. CII.) entitled, 'Sadler's Law of Population, and

disproof of Human Superfecundity;' containing also Additional Proofs of the Principle enunciated in that

Treatise, founded on the Censuses of different Countries recently published." By Michael Thomas Sadler,

"Before anything came out against my Essay, I was told I must prepare myself for a storm coming against it,

it being resolved by some men that it was necessary that book of mine should, as it is phrased, be run

We have, in violation of our usual practice, transcribed Mr Sadler's titlepage from top to bottom, motto and

all. The parallel implied between the Essay on the Human Understanding and the Essay on Superfecundity is

exquisitely laughable. We can match it, however, with mottoes as ludicrous. We remember to have heard of a

dramatic piece, entitled "News from Camperdown," written soon after Lord Duncan's victory, by a man once

as much in his own good graces as Mr Sadler is, and now as much forgotten as Mr Sadler will soon be,

Robert Heron. His piece was brought upon the stage, and damned, "as it is phrased," in the second act; but the

author, thinking that it had been unfairly and unjustly "run down," published it, in order to put his critics to

shame, with this motto from Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this

markthat the dunces are all in confederacy against him." We remember another anecdote, which may

perhaps be acceptable to so zealous a churchman as Mr Sadler. A certain Antinomian preacher, the oracle of

a barn, in a county of which we do not think it proper to mention the name, finding that divinity was not by

itself a sufficiently lucrative profession, resolved to combine with it that of dogstealing. He was, by

illfortune, detected in several offences of this description, and was in consequence brought before two

justices, who, in virtue of the powers given them by an act of parliament, sentenced him to a whipping for

each theft. The degrading punishment inflicted on the pastor naturally thinned the flock; and the poor man

was in danger of wanting bread. He accordingly put forth a handbill solemnly protesting his innocence,

describing his sufferings, and appealing to the Christian charity of the public; and to his pathetic address he

prefixed this most appropriate text: "Thrice was I beaten with rods.St Paul's Epistle to the Corinthians." He

did not perceive that, though St Paul had been scourged, no number of whippings, however severe, will of

themselves entitle a man to be considered as an apostle. Mr Sadler seems to us to have fallen into a somewhat

similar error. He should remember that, though Locke may have been laughed at, so has Sir Claudius Hunter;

and that it takes something more than the laughter of all the world to make a Locke.

The body of this pamphlet by no means justifies the parallel so modestly insinuated on the titlepage. Yet we

must own that, though Mr Sadler has not risen to the level of Locke, he has done what was almost as difficult,

if not as honourablehe has fallen below his own. He is at best a bad writer. His arrangement is an elaborate

confusion. His style has been constructed, with great care, in such a manner as to produce the least possible

effect by means of the greatest possible number of words. Aspiring to the exalted character of a Christian

philosopher, he can never preserve through a single paragraph either the calmness of a philosopher or the

meekness of a Christian. His illnature would make a very little wit formidable. But, happily, his efforts to

wound resemble those of a juggler's snake. The bags of poison are full, but the fang is wanting. In this foolish

pamphlet, all the unpleasant peculiarities of his style and temper are brought out in the strongest manner. He

is from the beginning to the end in a paroxysm of rage, and would certainly do us some mischief if he knew

how. We will give a single instance for the present. Others will present themselves as we proceed. We

laughed at some doggerel verses which he cited, and which we, never having seen them before, suspected to

be his own. We are now sure that if the principle on which Solomon decided a famous case of filiation were

correct, there can be no doubt as to the justice of our suspicion. Mr Sadler, who, whatever elements of the

poetical character he may lack, possesses the poetical irritability in an abundance which might have sufficed

for Homer himself, resolved to retaliate on the person, who, as he supposed, had reviewed him. He has,

accordingly, ransacked some collection of college verses, in the hope of finding, among the performances of

his supposed antagonist, something as bad as his own. And we must in fairness admit that he has succeeded

pretty well. We must admit that the gentleman in question sometimes put into his exercises, at seventeen,

almost as great nonsense as Mr Sadler is in the habit of putting into his books at sixty.

Mr Sadler complains that we have devoted whole pages to mere abuse of him. We deny the charge. We have,

indeed, characterised, in terms of just reprehension, that spirit which shows itself in every part of his prolix

work. Those terms of reprehension we are by no means inclined to retract; and we conceive that we might

have used much stronger expressions, without the least offence either to truth or to decorum. There is a limit

prescribed to us by our sense of what is due to ourselves. But we think that no indulgence is due to Mr Sadler.

A writer who distinctly announces that he has not conformed to the candour of the agewho makes it his

boast that he expresses himself throughout with the greatest plainness and freedomand whose constant

practice proves that by plainness and freedom he means coarseness and rancourhas no right to expect that

others shall remember courtesies which he has forgotten, or shall respect one who has ceased to respect

Mr Sadler declares that he has never vilified Mr Malthus personally, and has confined himself to attacking

the doctrines which that gentleman maintains. We should wish to leave that point to the decision of all who

have read Mr Sadler's book, or any twenty pages of it. To quote particular instances of a temper which

penetrates and inspires the whole work, is to weaken our charge. Yet, that we may not be suspected of

flinching, we will give two specimens,the two first which occur to our recollection. "Whose minister is it

that speaks thus?" says Mr Sadler, after misrepresenting in a most extraordinary manner, though, we are

willing to believe, unintentionally, one of the positions of Mr Malthus. "Whose minister is it that speaks thus?

That of the lover and avenger of little children?" Again, Mr Malthus recommends, erroneously perhaps, but

assuredly from humane motives, that alms, when given, should be given very sparingly. Mr Sadler quotes the

recommendation, and adds the following courteous comment:"The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel."

We cannot think that a writer who indulges in these indecent and unjust attacks on professional and personal

character has any right to complain of our sarcasms on his metaphors and rhymes.

We will now proceed to examine the reply which Mr Sadler has thought fit to make to our arguments. He

begins by attacking our remarks on the origin of evil. They are, says he, too profound for common

apprehension; and he hopes that they are too profound for our own. That they seem profound to him we can

well believe. Profundity, in its secondary as in its primary sense, is a relative term. When Grildrig was nearly

drowned in the Brobdingnagian creamjug he doubtless thought it very deep. But to common apprehension

The theory of Mr Malthus, says Mr Sadler, cannot be true, because it asserts the existence of a great and

terrible evil, and is therefore inconsistent with the goodness of God. We answer thus. We know that there are

in the world great and terrible evils. In spite of these evils, we believe in the goodness of God. Why may we

not then continue to believe in his goodness, though another evil should be added to the list?

How does Mr Sadler answer this? Merely by telling us, that we are too wicked to be reasoned with. He

completely shrinks from the question; a question, be it remembered, not raised by usa question which we

should have felt strong objections to raising unnecessarilya question put forward by himself, as intimately

connected with the subject of his two ponderous volumes. He attempts to carp at detached parts of our

reasoning on the subject. With what success he carries on this guerilla war after declining a general action

"The Reviewer sends me to Paley, who is, I confess, rather more intelligible on the subject, and who,

fortunately, has decided the very point in dispute. I will first give the words of the Reviewer, who, when

speaking of my general argument regarding the magnitude of the evils, moral and physical, implied in the

theory I oppose, sums up his ideas thus:'Mr Sadler says, that it is not a light or transient evil, but a great

and permanent evil. What then? The question of the origin of evil is a question of aye or no,not a question

of MORE or LESS.' But what says Paley? His express rule is this, that 'when we cannot resolve all

appearances into benevolence of design, we make the FEW give place to the MANY, the LITTLE to the

GREAT; that we take our judgment from a large and decided preponderancy.' Now in weighing these two

authorities, directly at issue on this point, I think there will be little trouble in determining which we shall

make 'to give place;' or, if we 'look to a large and decided preponderancy' of either talent, learning, or

benevolence, from whom we shall 'take our judgment.' The effrontery, or, to speak more charitably, the

ignorance of a reference to Paley on this subject, and in this instance, is really marvellous."

Now, does not Mr Sadler see that the very words which he quotes from Paley contain in themselves a

refutation of his whole argument? Paley says, indeed, as every man in his senses would say, that in a certain

case, which he has specified, the more and the less come into question. But in what case? "When we

CANNOT resolve all appearances into the benevolence of design." It is better that there should be a little evil

than a great deal of evil. This is selfevident. But it is also selfevident, that no evil is better than a little evil.

Why, then, is there any evil? It is a mystery which we cannot solve. It is a mystery which Paley, by the very

words which Mr Sadler has quoted, acknowledges himself unable to solve; and it is because he cannot solve

that mystery that he proceeds to take into consideration the more and the less. Believing in the divine

goodness, we must necessarily believe that the evils which exist are necessary to avert greater evils. But what

those greater evils are, we do not know. How the happiness of any part of the sentient creation would be in

any respect diminished if, for example, children cut their teeth without pain, we cannot understand. The case

is exactly the same with the principle of Mr Malthus. If superfecundity exists, it exists, no doubt, because it is

a less evil than some other evil which otherwise would exist. Can Mr Sadler prove that this is an

One single expression which Mr Sadler employs on this subject is sufficient to show how utterly incompetent

he is to discuss it. "On the Christian hypothesis," says he, "no doubt exists as to the origin of evil." He does

not, we think, understand what is meant by the origin of evil. The Christian Scriptures profess to give no

solution of that mystery. They relate facts: but they leave the metaphysical question undetermined. They tell

us that man fell; but why he was not so constituted as to be incapable of falling, or why the Supreme Being

has not mitigated the consequences of the Fall more than they actually have been mitigated, the Scriptures did

not tell us, and, it may without presumption be said, could not tell us, unless we had been creatures different

from what we are. There is something, either in the nature of our faculties or in the nature of the machinery

employed by us for the purpose of reasoning, which condemns us, on this and similar subjects, to hopeless

ignorance. Man can understand these high matters only by ceasing to be man, just as a fly can understand a

lemma of Newton only by ceasing to be a fly. To make it an objection to the Christian system that it gives us

no solution of these difficulties, is to make it an objection to the Christian system that it is a system formed

for human beings. Of the puzzles of the Academy, there is not one which does not apply as strongly to Deism

as to Christianity, and to Atheism as to Deism. There are difficulties in everything. Yet we are sure that

If revelation speaks on the subject of the origin of evil it speaks only to discourage dogmatism and temerity.

In the most ancient, the most beautiful, and the most profound of all works on the subject, the Book of Job,

both the sufferer who complains of the divine government, and the injudicious advisers who attempt to

defend it on wrong principles, are silenced by the voice of supreme wisdom, and reminded that the question

is beyond the reach of the human intellect. St Paul silences the supposed objector, who strives to force him

into controversy, in the same manner. The church has been, ever since the apostolic times, agitated by this

question, and by a question which is inseparable from it, the question of fate and freewill. The greatest

theologians and philosophers have acknowledged that these things were too high for them, and have

contended themselves with hinting at what seemed to be the most probable solution. What says Johnson? "All

our effort ends in belief that for the evils of life there is some good reason, and in confession that the reason

cannot be found." What says Paley? "Of the origin of evil no universal solution has been discovered. I mean

no solution which reaches to all cases of complaint.The consideration of general laws, although it may

concern the question of the origin of evil very nearly, which I think it does, rests in views disproportionate to

our faculties, and in a knowledge which we do not possess. It serves rather to account for the obscurity of the

subject, than to supply us with distinct answers to our difficulties." What says presumptuous ignorance? "No

doubt whatever exists as to the origin of evil." It is remarkable that Mr Sadler does not tell us what his

"Though I have shown," says he, "and on authorities from which none can lightly differ, not only the cruelty

and immorality which this system necessarily involves, but its most revolting feature, its gross partiality, he

has wholly suppressed this, the most important part of my argument; as even the bare notice of it would have

instantly exposed the sophistry to which he has had recourse. If, however, he would fairly meet the whole

question, let him show me that 'hydrophobia,' which he gives as an example of the laws of God and nature, is

a calamity to which the poor alone are liable; or that 'malaria,' which, with singular infelicity, he has chosen

as an illustration of the fancied evils of population, is a respecter of persons."

We said nothing about this argument, as Mr Sadler calls it, merely because we did not think it worth while:

and we are half ashamed to say anything about it now. But, since Mr Sadler is so urgent for an answer, he

shall have one. If there is evil, it must be either partial or universal. Which is the better of the two?

Hydrophobia, says this great philosopher, is no argument against the divine goodness, because mad dogs bite

rich and poor alike; but if the rich were exempted, and only nine people suffered for ten who suffer now,

hydrophobia would forthwith, simply because it would produce less evil than at present, become an argument

against the divine goodness! To state such a proposition, is to refute it. And is not the malaria a respecter of

persons? It infests Rome. Does it infest London? There are complaints peculiar to the tropical countries.

There are others which are found only in mountainous districts; others which are confined to marshy regions;

others again which run in particular families. Is not this partiality? Why is it more inconsistent with the divine

goodness that poor men should suffer an evil from which rich men are exempt, than that a particular portion

of the community should inherit gout, scrofula, insanity, and other maladies? And are there no miseries under

which, in fact, the poor alone are suffering? Mr Sadler himself acknowledges, in this very paragraph, that

there are such; but he tells us that these calamities are the effects of misgovernment, and that this

misgovernment is the effect of political economy. Be it so. But does he not see that he is only removing the

difficulty one step further? Why does Providence suffer men, whose minds are filled with false and

pernicious notions, to have power in the state? For good ends, we doubt not, if the fact be so; but for ends

inscrutable to us, who see only a small part of the vast scheme, and who see that small part only for a short

period. Does Mr Sadler doubt that the Supreme Being has power as absolute over the revolutions of political

as over the organisation of natural bodies? Surely not: and, if not, we do not see that he vindicates the ways of

Providence by attributing the distresses, which the poor, as he confesses, endure, to an error in legislation

rather than to a law of physiology. Turn the question as we may, disguise it as we may, we shall find that it at

last resolves itself into the same great enigma,the origin of physical and moral evil: an enigma which the

highest human intellects have given up in despair, but which Mr Sadler thinks himself perfectly able to solve.

He next accuses us of having paused long on verbal criticism. We certainly did object to his improper use of

the words "inverse variation." Mr Sadler complains of this with his usual bitterness.

"Now what is the Reviewer's quarrel with me on this occasion? That he does not understand the meaning of

my terms? No. He acknowledges the contrary. That I have not fully explained the sense in which I have used

them? No. An explanation, he knows, is immediately subjoined, though he has carefully suppressed it. That I

have varied the sense in which I have applied them? No. I challenge him to show it. But he nevertheless goes

on for many pages together in arguing against what he knows, and, in fact, acknowledges, I did not mean; and

then turns round and argues again, though much more feebly, indeed, against what he says I did mean! Now,

even had I been in error as to the use of a word, I appeal to the reader whether such an unworthy and

disingenuous course would not, if generally pursued, make controversy on all subjects, however important,

The best way to avoid controversies about words is to use words in their proper senses. Mr Sadler may think

our objection captious; but how he can think it disingenuous we do not well understand. If we had

represented him as meaning what we knew that he did not mean, we should have acted in a disgraceful

manner. But we did not represent him, and he allows that we did not represent him, as meaning what he did

not mean. We blamed him, and with perfect justice and propriety, for saying what he did not mean. Every

man has in one sense a right to define his own terms; that is to say, if he chooses to call one two, and two

seven, it would be absurd to charge him with false arithmetic for saying that seven is the double of one. But it

would be perfectly fair to blame him for changing the established sense of words. The words, "inverse

variation," in matters not purely scientific, have often been used in the loose way in which Mr Sadler has

used them. But we shall be surprised if he can find a single instance of their having been so used in a matter

We will illustrate our meaning thus. Lord Thurlow, in one of his speeches about Indian affairs, said that one

Hastings was worth twenty Macartneys. He might, with equal propriety, have said ten Macartneys, or a

hundred Macartneys. Nor would there have been the least inconsistency in his using all the three expressions

in one speech. But would this be an excuse for a financier who, in a matter of account, should reason as if ten,

Mr Sadler tells us that he purposely avoided the use of the word proportion in stating his principle. He seems,

therefore, to allow that the word proportion would have been improper. Yet he did in fact employ it in

explaining his principle, accompanied with an awkward explanation intended to signify that, though he said

proportion, he meant something quite different from proportion. We should not have said so much on this

subject either in our former article, or at present, but that there is in all Mr Sadler's writings an air of scientific

pedantry, which renders his errors fair game. We will now let the matter rest; and, instead of assailing Mr

Sadler with our verbal criticism, proceed to defend ourselves against his literal criticism.

"The Reviewer promised his readers that some curious results should follow from his shuffling. We will

"'In two English counties,' says he, 'which contain from 50 to 100 inhabitants on the square mile, the births to

100 marriages are, according to Mr Sadler, 420; but in 44 departments of France, in which there are from one

to two hecatares [hectares] to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the population is from 125 to 250, or

rather more, to the square mile, the number of births to one hundred marriages is 423 and a fraction.'

"The first curious result is, that our Reviewer is ignorant, not only of the name, but of the extent, of a French

hectare; otherwise he is guilty of a practice which, even if transferred to the gamblingtable, would, I

presume, prevent him from being allowed ever to shuffle, even there, again. He was most ready to pronounce

upon a mistake of one per cent. in a calculation of mine, the difference in no wise affecting the argument in

hand; but here I must inform him, that his error, whether wilfully or ignorantly put forth, involves his entire

"The French hectare I had calculated to contain 107,708 67/100 English square feet, or 2 47265/100000

acres; Dr Kelly takes it, on authority which he gives, at 107,644 143923/1000000 English square feet, or 2

471169/1000000 acres. The last French "Annuaires", however, state it, I perceive, as being equal to 2

473614/1000000 acres. The difference is very trifling, and will not in the slightest degree cover our critic's

error. The first calculation gives about 258 83/100 hectares to an English square mile; the second, 258

73/100; the last, or French calculation 258 98/100. When, therefore, the Reviewer calculates the population of

the departments of France thus: 'from one to two hectares to each inhabitant, that is to say, in which the

population is from 125 to 250, or rather more, to the square mile; his 'that is to say,' is that which he ought not

We must inform Mr Sadler, in the first place, that we inserted the vowel which amuses him so much, not

from ignorance or from carelessness, but advisedly, and in conformity with the practice of several respectable

writers. He will find the word hecatare in Ree's Cyclopaedia. He will find it also in Dr Young. We prefer the

form which we have employed, because it is etymologically correct. Mr Sadler seems not to know that a

We were perfectly acquainted with the extent as well as with the name of a hecatare. Is it at all strange that

we should use the words "250, or rather more," in speaking of 258 and a fraction? Do not people constantly

employ round numbers with still greater looseness, in translating foreign distances and foreign money? If

indeed, as Mr Sadler says, the difference which he chooses to call an error involved the entire argument, or

any part of the argument, we should have been guilty of gross unfairness. But it is not so. The difference

between 258 and 250, as even Mr Sadler would see if he were not blind with fury, was a difference to his

advantage. Our point was this. The fecundity of a dense population in certain departments of France is greater

than that of a thinly scattered population in certain counties of England. The more dense, therefore, the

population in those departments of France, the stronger was our case. By putting 250, instead of 258, we

understated our case. Mr Sadler's correction of our orthography leads us to suspect that he knows very little

of Greek; and his correction of our calculation quite satisfies us that he knows very little of logic.

But, to come to the gist of the controversy. Our argument, drawn from Mr Sadler's own tables, remains

absolutely untouched. He makes excuses indeed; for an excuse is the last thing that Mr Sadler will ever want.

There is something half laughable and half provoking in the facility with which he asserts and retracts, says

and unsays, exactly as suits his argument. Sometimes the register of baptisms is imperfect, and sometimes the

census of Prussia in proof of his theory. We show that it directly confutes his theory; and it forthwith

becomes "notoriously and grossly defective." The census of the Netherlands is not to be easily dealt with; and

the census of the Netherlands is therefore pronounced inaccurate. In his book on the Law of Population, he

tells us that "in the slaveholding States of America, the male slaves constitute a decided majority of that

unfortunate class." This fact we turned against him; and, forgetting that he had himself stated it, he tells us

that "it is as erroneous as many other ideas which we entertain," and that "he will venture to assert that the

female slaves were, at the nubile age, as numerous as the males." The increase of the negroes in the United

States puzzles him; and he creates a vast slavetrade to solve it. He confounds together things perfectly

different; the slavetrade carried on under the American flag, and the slave trade carried on for the supply

of the American soil,the slave trade with Africa, and the internal slavetrade between the different States.

He exaggerates a few occasional acts of smuggling into an immense and regular importation, and makes his

escape as well as he can under cover of this hubbub of words. Documents are authentic and facts true

precisely in proportion to the support which they afford to his theory. This is one way, undoubtedly, of

As to the inconsistencies which we pointed out between his theory and his own tables, he finds no difficulty

in explaining them away or facing them out. In one case there would have been no contradiction if, instead of

taking one of his tables, we had multiplied the number of three tables together, and taken the average.

Another would never have existed if there had not been a great migration of people into Lancashire. Another

is not to be got over by any device. But then it is very small, and of no consequence to the argument.

Here, indeed, he is perhaps right. The inconsistencies which we noticed, were, in themselves, of little

moment. We give them as samples,as mere hints, to caution those of our readers who might also happen to

be readers of Mr Sadler against being deceived by his packing. He complains of the word packing. We repeat

it; and, since he has defied us to the proof, we will go fully into the question which, in our last article, we

only glanced at, and prove, in such a manner as shall not leave even to Mr Sadler any shadow of excuse, that

That our readers may fully understand our reasoning, we will again state what Mr Sadler's proposition is. He

asserts that, on a given space, the number of children to a marriage becomes less and less as the population

We will begin with the census of France given by Mr Sadler. By joining the departments together in

combinations which suit his purpose, he has contrived to produce three tables, which he presents as decisive

"The legitimate births are, in those departments where there are to each inhabitant

4 to 5 2 130 3 to 4 3 4372 2 to 3 30 4250 1 to 2 44 4234 .06 to 1 5 4146 .06 1 2657

Hect. to each Number of Legit. Births to Legit. Births to Inhabitant Departments 100 Marriages 100 Mar.

4 to 5 2 497 397 3 to 4 3 439 389 2 to 3 30 424 379 1 to 2 44 420 375 under 1 5 415 372 and .06 1 263 253

These tables, as we said in our former article, certainly look well for Mr Sadler's theory. "Do they?" says he.

"Assuredly they do; and in admitting this, the Reviewer has admitted the theory to be proved." We cannot

absolutely agree to this. A theory is not proved, we must tell Mr Sadler, merely because the evidence in its

favour looks well at first sight. There is an old proverb, very homely in expression, but well deserving to be

had in constant remembrance by all men, engaged either in action or in speculation"One story is good till

We affirm, then, that the results which these tables present, and which seem so favourable to Mr Sadler's

In the first place, if we look at the departments singly, the whole is in disorder. About the department in

which Paris is situated there is no dispute: Mr Malthus distinctly admits that great cities prevent propagation.

There remain eightyfour departments; and of these there is not, we believe, a single one in the place which,

That which ought to be highest in fecundity is tenth in one table, fourteenth in another, and only thirtyfirst

according to the third. That which ought to be third is twentysecond by the table, which places it highest.

That which ought to be fourth is fortieth by the table, which places it highest. That which ought to be eighth

is fiftieth or sixtieth. That which ought to be tenth from the top is at about the same distance from the bottom.

On the other hand, that which, according to Mr Sadler's principle, ought to be last but two of all the

eightyfour is third in two of the tables, and seventh in that which places it lowest; and that which ought to be

last is, in one of Mr Sadler's tables, above that which ought to be first, in two of them, above that which ought

By dividing the departments in a particular manner, Mr Sadler has produced results which he contemplates

with great satisfaction. But, if we draw the lines a little higher up or a little lower down, we shall find that all

his calculations are thrown into utter confusion; and that the phenomena, if they indicate anything, indicate a

Let us take, for example, the thirtytwo departments, as they stand in Mr Sadler's table, from Lozere to

Meuse inclusive, and divide them into two sets of sixteen departments each. The set from Lozere and Loiret

inclusive consists of those departments in which the space to each inhabitant is from 3.8 hecatares to 2.42.

The set from Cantal to Meuse inclusive consists of those departments in which the space to each inhabitant is

from 2.42 hecatares to 2.07. That is to say, in the former set the inhabitants are from 68 to 107 on the square

mile, or thereabouts. In the latter they are from 107 to 125. Therefore, on Mr Sadler's principle, the fecundity

ought to be smaller in the latter set than in the former. It is, however, greater, and that in every one of Mr

Let us now go a little lower down, and take another set of sixteen departmentsthose which lie together in

Mr Sadler's tables, from Herault to Jura inclusive. Here the population is still thicker than in the second of

those sets which we before compared. The fecundity, therefore, ought, on Mr Sadler's principle, to be less

than in that set. But it is again greater, and that in all Mr Sadler's three tables. We have a regularly ascending

series, where, if his theory had any truth in it, we ought to have a regularly descending series. We will give

In the sixteen departments where there are from 68 to 107 people on a square mile................ 4188 4226 3780

In the sixteen departments where there are from 107 to 125 people on a square mile................ 4374 4332

In the sixteen departments where there are from 134 to 155 people on a square mile................ 4484 4416

We will give another instance, if possible still more decisive. We will take the three departments of France

which ought, on Mr Sadler's principle, to be the lowest in fecundity of all the eightyfive, saving only that in

which Paris stands; and we will compare them with the three departments in which the fecundity ought,

according to him, to be greater than in any other department of France, two only excepted. We will compare

Bas Rhin, Rhone, and Nord, with Lozere, Landes, and Indre. In Lozere, Landes, and Indre, the population is

from 68 to 84 on the square mile or nearly so. In Bas Rhin, Rhone, and Nord, it is from 300 to 417 on the

square mile. There cannot be a more overwhelming answer to Mr Sadler's theory than the table which we

In the three departments in which there are from 68 to 84 people on the square mile............... 4372 4390 3890

In the three departments in which there are from 300 to 417 people on the square mile............... 4457 4510

These are strong cases. But we have a still stronger case. Take the whole of the third, fourth, and fifth

divisions into which Mr Sadler has portioned out the French departments. These three divisions make up

almost the whole kingdom of France. They contain seventynine out of the eightyfive departments. Mr

Sadler has contrived to divide them in such a manner that, to a person who looks merely at his averages, the

fecundity seems to diminish as the population thickens. We will separate them into two parts instead of three.

We will draw the line between the department of Gironde and that of Herault. On the one side are the

thirtytwo departments from Cher to Gironde inclusive. On the other side are the fortysix departments from

Herault to Nord inclusive. In all the departments of the former set, the population is under 132 on the square

mile. In all the departments of the latter set, it is above 132 on the square mile. It is clear that, if there be one

word of truth in Mr Sadler's theory, the fecundity in the latter of these divisions must be very decidedly

smaller than in the former. Is it so? It is, on the contrary, greater in all the three tables. We give the result.

In the thirtytwo departments in which there are from 86 to 132 people on the square mile....... 4210 4199

In the fortyseven departments in which there are from 132 to 417 people on the square mile........ 4250 4224

This fact is alone enough to decide the question. Yet it is only one of a crowd of similar facts. If the line

between Mr Sadler's second and third division be drawn six departments lower down, the third and fourth

divisions will, in all the tables, be above the second. If the line between the third and fourth divisions be

drawn two departments lower down, the fourth division will be above the third in all the tables. If the line

between the fourth and fifth division be drawn two departments lower down, the fifth will, in all the tables, be

above the fourth, above the third, and even above the second. How, then, has Mr Sadler obtained his results?

By packing solely. By placing in one compartment a district no larger than the Isle of Wight; in another, a

district somewhat less than Yorkshire; in the third, a territory much larger than the island of Great Britain.

By the same artifice it is that he has obtained from the census of England those delusive averages which he

brings forward with the utmost ostentation in proof of his principle. We will examine the facts relating to

If we look at the counties one by one, Mr Sadler's principle utterly fails. Hertfordshire with 251 on the square

mile; Worcester with 258; and Kent with 282, exhibit a far greater fecundity than the East Riding of York,

which has 151 on the square mile; Monmouthshire, which has 145; or Northumberland, which has 108. The

fecundity of Staffordshire, which has more than 300 on the square mile, is as high as the average fecundity of

the counties which have from 150 to 200 on the square mile. But, instead of confining ourselves to particular

Take the eight counties of England which stand together in Mr Sadler's list, from Cumberland to Dorset

inclusive. In these the population is from 107 to 150 on the square mile. Compare with these the eight

counties from Berks to Durham inclusive, in which the population is from 175 to 200 on the square mile. Is

the fecundity in the latter counties smaller than in the former? On the contrary, the result stands thus:

In the eight counties of England, in which there are from 107 to 146 people on the square mile............. 388

In the eight counties of England, in which there are from 175 to 200 people on the square mile..............402

Take the six districts from the East Riding of York to the County of Norfolk inclusive. Here the population is

from 150 to 170 on the square mile. To these oppose the six counties from Derby to Worcester inclusive. The

population is from 200 to 260. Here again we find that a law, directly the reverse of that which Mr Sadler has

In the six counties in which there are from 150 to 170 people on the square mile................................392

In the six counties in which there are from 200 to 260 people on the square mile................................399

But we will make another experiment on Mr Sadler's tables, if possible more decisive than any of those

which we have hitherto made. We will take the four largest divisions into which he has distributed the

English counties, and which follow each other in regular order. That our readers may fully comprehend the

nature of that packing by which his theory is supported, we will set before them this part of his table.

(Here follows a table showing for population on a square mile the proportion of births to 100 marriages,

These averages look well, undoubtedly, for Mr Sadler's theory. The numbers 396, 390, 388, 378, follow each

other very speciously in a descending order. But let our readers divide these thirty four counties into two

equal sets of seventeen counties each, and try whether the principle will then hold good. We have made this

In the seventeen counties of England in which there are from 100 to 177 people on the square mile..........387

In the seventeen counties in which there are from 177 to 282 people on the square mile..........389

The difference is small, but not smaller than differences which Mr Sadler has brought forward as proofs of

his theory. We say that these English tables no more prove that fecundity increases with the population than

that it diminishes with the population. The thirtyfour counties which we have taken make up, at least

fourfifths of the kingdom: and we see that, through those thirtyfour counties, the phenomena are directly

opposed to Mr Sadler's principle. That in the capital, and in great manufacturing towns, marriages are less

prolific than in the open country, we admit, and Mr Malthus admits. But that any condensation of the

population, short of that which injures all physical energies, will diminish the prolific powers of man, is, from

It is scarcely worth while to proceed with instances, after proofs so overwhelming as those which we have

given. Yet we will show that Mr Sadler has formed his averages on the census of Prussia by an artifice

Demonstrating the Law of Population from the Censuses of Prussia at two several Periods.

(Here follows a table showing for inhabitants on a square league the average number of births to each

832 to 928...4.34 and 4.72 1175 to 1909...4.14 and 4.45 (including East Prussia at 1175) 2083 to 2700...3.84

Of the census of 1756 we will say nothing, as Mr Sadler, finding himself hard pressed by the argument which

we drew from it, now declares it to be grossly defective. We confine ourselves to the census of 1784: and we

will draw our lines at points somewhat different from those at which Mr Sadler has drawn his. Let the first

compartment remain as it stands. Let East Prussia, which contains a much larger population than his last

compartment, stand alone in the second division. Let the third consist of the New Mark, the Mark of

Brandenburg, East Friesland and Guelderland, and the fourth of the remaining provinces. Our readers will

find that, on this arrangement, the division which, on Mr Sadler's principle, ought to be second in fecundity

stands higher than that which ought to be first; and that the division which ought to be fourth stands higher

In those provinces of Prussia where there are fewer than 1000 people on the square league.......................4.72

In the province in which there are 1175 people on the square league..........................................5.10

In the provinces in which there are from 1190 to 2083 people on the square league............................4.10

In the provinces in which there are from 2314 to 3461 people on the square league............................4.27

We will go no further with this examination. In fact, we have nothing more to examine. The tables which we

have scrutinised constitute the whole strength of Mr Sadler's case; and we confidently leave it to our readers

Be it remembered too that we are reasoning on data furnished by Mr Sadler himself. We have not made

collections of facts to set against his, as we easily might have done. It is on his own showing, it is out of his

That packing which we have exposed is not the only sort of packing which Mr Sadler has practised. We

mentioned in our review some facts relating to the towns of England, which appear from Mr Sadler's tables,

and which it seems impossible to explain if his principles be sound. The average fecundity of a marriage in

towns of fewer than 3000 inhabitants is greater than the average fecundity of the kingdom. The average

fecundity in towns of from 4000 to 5000 inhabitants is greater than the average fecundity of Warwickshire,

Lancashire, or Surrey. How is it, we asked, if Mr Sadler's principle be correct, that the fecundity of Guildford

Mr Sadler, in reply, talks about "the absurdity of comparing the fecundity in the small towns alluded to with

that in the counties of Warwick and Stafford, or in those of Lancaster and Surrey." He proceeds thus

"In Warwickshire, far above half the population is comprised in large towns, including, of course, the

immense metropolis of one great branch of our manufactures, Birmingham. In the county of Stafford, besides

the large and populous towns in its iron districts, situated so close together as almost to form, for considerable

distances, a continuous street; there is, in its potteries, a great population, recently accumulated, not included,

indeed, in the towns distinctly enumerated in the censuses, but vastly exceeding in its condensation that found

in the places to which the Reviewer alludes. In Lancashire, again, to which he also appeals, onefourth of the

entire population is made up of the inhabitants of two only of the towns of that county; far above half of it is

contained in towns, compared with which those he refers to are villages: even the hamlets of the

manufacturing parts of Lancashire are often far more populous than the places he mentions. But he presents

us with a climax of absurdity in appealing lastly to the population of Surrey as quite rural compared with that

of the twelve towns having less than 5000 inhabitants in their respective jurisdictions, such as

SaffronWalden, Monmouth, etc. Now, in the last census, Surrey numbered 398,658 inhabitants, and to say

not a word about the other towns of the county, much above two hundred thousands of these are WITHIN

THE BILLS OF MORTALITY! 'We should, therefore, be glad to know' how it is utterly inconsistent with

my principle that the fecundity of Guildford, which numbers about 3000 inhabitants, should be greater than

the average fecundity of Surrey, made up, as the bulk of the population of Surrey is, of the inhabitants of

some of the worst parts of the metropolis? Or why the fecundity of a given number of marriages in the eleven

little rural towns he alludes to, being somewhat higher than that of an equal number, half taken, for instance,

from the heart of Birmingham or Manchester, and half from the populous districts by which they are

"Had the Reviewer's object, in this instance, been to discover the truth, or had he known how to pursue it, it is

perfectly clear, at first sight, that he would not have instituted a comparison between the prolificness which

exists in the small towns he has alluded to, and that in certain districts, the population of which is made up,

partly of rural inhabitants and partly of accumulations of people in immense masses, the prolificness of

which, if he will allow me still the use of the phrase, is inversely as their magnitude; but he would have

compared these small towns with the country places properly so called, and then again the different classes of

towns with each other; this method would have led him to certain conclusions on the subject."

Now, this reply shows that Mr Sadler does not in the least understand the principle which he has himself laid

down. What is that principle? It is this, that the fecundity of human beings ON GIVEN SPACES, varies

inversely as their numbers. We know what he means by inverse variation. But we must suppose that he uses

the words, "given spaces," in the proper sense. Given spaces are equal spaces. Is there any reason to believe,

that in those parts of Surrey which lie within the bills of mortality, there is any space equal in area to the

space on which Guildford stands, which is more thickly peopled than the space on which Guildford stands?

We do not know that there is any such. We are sure that there are not many. Why, therefore, on Mr Sadler's

principle, should the people of Guildford be more prolific than the people who live within the bills of

mortality? And, if the people of Guildford ought, as on Mr Sadler's principle they unquestionably ought, to

stand as low in the scale of fecundity as the people of Southwark itself, it follows, most clearly, that they

ought to stand far lower than the average obtained by taking all the people of Surrey together.

The same remark applies to the case of Birmingham, and to all the other cases which Mr Sadler mentions.

Towns of 5000 inhabitants may be, and often are, as thickly peopled "on a given space," as Birmingham.

They are, in other words, as thickly peopled as a portion of Birmingham, equal to them in area. If so, on Mr

Sadler's principle, they ought to be as low in the scale of fecundity as Birmingham. But they are not so. On

the contrary, they stand higher than the average obtained by taking the fecundity of Birmingham in

The plain fact is, that Mr Sadler has confounded the population of a city with its population "on a given

space,"a mistake which, in a gentleman who assures us that mathematical science was one of his early and

favourite studies, is somewhat curious. It is as absurd, on his principle, to say that the fecundity of London

ought to be less than the fecundity of Edinburgh, because London has a greater population than Edinburgh, as

to say that the fecundity of Russia ought to be greater than that of England, because Russia has a greater

population than England. He cannot say that the spaces on which towns stand are too small to exemplify the

truth of his principle. For he has himself brought forward the scale of fecundity in towns, as a proof of his

principle. And, in the very passage which we quoted above, he tells us that, if we knew how to pursue truth or

wished to find it, we "should have compared these small towns with country places, and the different classes

of towns with each other." That is to say, we ought to compare together such unequal spaces as give results

favourable to his theory, and never to compare such equal spaces as give results opposed to it. Does he mean

anything by "a given space?" Or does he mean merely such a space as suits his argument? It is perfectly clear

that, if he is allowed to take this course, he may prove anything. No fact can come amiss to him. Suppose, for

example, that the fecundity of New York should prove to be smaller than the fecundity of Liverpool. "That,"

says Mr Sadler, "makes for my theory. For there are more people within two miles of the Broadway of New

York, than within two miles of the Exchange of Liverpool." Suppose, on the other hand, that the fecundity of

New York should be greater than the fecundity of Liverpool. "This," says Mr Sadler again, "is an

unanswerable proof of my theory. For there are many more people within forty miles of Liverpool than

within forty miles of New York." In order to obtain his numbers, he takes spaces in any combinations which

may suit him. In order to obtain his averages, he takes numbers in any combinations which may suit him.

And then he tells us that, because his tables, at the first glance, look well for his theory, his theory is

We will add a few words respecting the argument which we drew from the peerage. Mr Sadler asserted that

the peers were a class condemned by nature to sterility. We denied this, and showed from the last edition of

Debrett, that the peers of the United Kingdom have considerably more than the average number of children to

a marriage. Mr Sadler's answer has amused us much. He denies the accuracy of our counting, and, by

reckoning all the Scotch and Irish peers as peers of the United Kingdom, certainly makes very different

numbers from those which we gave. A member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom might have been

By taking the Scotch and Irish peers, Mr Sadler has altered the average. But it is considerably higher than the

average fecundity of England, and still, therefore, constitutes an unanswerable argument against his theory.

The shifts to which, in this difficulty, he has recourse, are exceedingly diverting. "The average fecundity of

the marriages of peers," said we, "is higher by onefifth than the average fecundity of marriages throughout

"Where, or by whom did the Reviewer find it supposed," answers Mr Sadler, "that the registered baptisms

Assuredly, if the registers of England are so defective as to explain the difference which, on our calculation,

exists between the fecundity of the peers and the fecundity of the people, no argument against Mr Sadler's

theory can be drawn from that difference. But what becomes of all the other arguments which Mr Sadler has

founded on these very registers? Above all, what becomes of his comparison between the censuses of

England and France? In the pamphlet before us, he dwells with great complacency on a coincidence which

seems to him to support his theory, and which to us seems, of itself, sufficient to overthrow it.

"In my table of the population of France in the fortyfour departments in which there are from one to two

hectares to each inhabitant, the fecundity of 100 marriages, calculated on the average of the results of the

three computations relating to different periods given in my table, is 406 7/10. In the twenty two counties of

England in which there is from one to two hectares to each inhabitant, or from 129 to 259 on the square

mile,beginning, therefore, with Huntingdonshire, and ending with Worcestershire,the whole number of

marriages during ten years will be found to amount to 379,624, and the whole number of the births during the

same term to 1,545,549or 407 1/10 births to 100 marriages! A difference of one in one thousand only,

Does not Mr Sadler see that, if the registers of England, which are notoriously very defective, give a result

exactly corresponding almost to an unit with that obtained from the registers of France, which are notoriously

very full and accurate, this proves the very reverse of what he employs it to prove? The correspondence of the

registers proves that there is no correspondence in the facts. In order to raise the average fecundity of England

even to the level of the average fecundity of the peers of the three kingdoms, which is 3.81 to a marriage, it is

necessary to add nearly six per cent. to the number of births given in the English registers. But, if this

addition be made, we shall have, in the counties of England, from Huntingdonshire to Worcestershire

inclusive, 4.30 births to a marriage or thereabouts: and the boasted coincidence between the phenomena of

propagation in France and England disappears at once. This is a curious specimen of Mr Sadler's proficiency

in the art of making excuses. In the same pamphlet he reasons as if the same registers were accurate to one in

He tries to show that we have not taken a fair criterion of the fecundity of the peers. We are not quite sure

that we understand his reasoning on this subject. The order of his observations is more than usually confused,

and the cloud of words more than usually thick. We will give the argument on which he seems to lay most

"But I shall first notice a far more obvious and important blunder into which the Reviewer has fallen; or into

which, I rather fear, he knowingly wishes to precipitate his readers, since I have distinctly pointed out what

ought to have preserved him from it in the very chapter he is criticising and contradicting. It is this:he has

entirely omitted 'counting' the sterile marriages of all those peerages which have become extinct during the

very period his counting embraces. He counts, for instance, Earl Fitzwilliam, his marriages, and heir; but has

he not omitted to enumerate the marriages of those branches of the same noble house, which have become

extinct since that venerable individual possessed his title? He talks of my having appealed merely to the

extinction of peerages in my argument; but, on his plan of computation, extinctions are perpetually and

wholly lost sight of. In computing the average prolificness of the marriages of the nobles, he positively

counts from a select class of them only, one from which the unprolific are constantly weeded, and regularly

disappear; and he thus comes to the conclusion, that the peers are 'an eminently prolific class!' Just as though

a farmer should compute the rate of increase; not from the quantity of seed sown, but from that part of it only

which comes to perfection, entirely omitting all which had failed to spring up or come to maturity. Upon this

principle the most scanty crop ever obtained, in which the husbandman should fail to receive 'seed again,' as

If we understand this passage rightly, it decisively proves that Mr Sadler is incompetent to perform even the

lowest offices of statistical research. What shadow of reason is there to believe that the peers who were alive

in the year 1828 differed as to their prolificness from any other equally numerous set of peers taken at

random? In what sense were the peers who were alive in 1828 analogous to that part of the seed which comes

to perfection? Did we entirely omit all that failed? On the contrary, we counted the sterile as well as the

fruitful marriages of all the peers of the United Kingdom living at one time. In what way were the peers who

were alive in 1828 a select class? In what way were the sterile weeded from among them? Did every peer

who had been married without having issue die in 1827? What shadow of reason is there to suppose that there

was not the ordinary proportion of barren marriages among the marriages contracted by the noblemen whose

names are in Debrett's last edition? But we ought, says Mr Sadler, to have counted all the sterile marriages of

all the peers "whose titles had become extinct during the period which our counting embraced;" that is to say,

since the earliest marriage contracted by any peer living in 1828. Was such a proposition ever heard of

before? Surely we were bound to do no such thing, unless at the same time we had counted also the children

born from all the fruitful marriages contracted by peers during the same period. Mr Sadler would have us

divide the number of children born to peers living in 1828, not by the number of marriages which those peers

contracted, but by the number of marriages which those peers contracted added to a crowd of marriages

selected, on account of their sterility, from among the noble marriages which have taken place during the last

fifty years. Is this the way to obtain fair averages? We might as well require that all the noble marriages

which during the last fifty years have produced ten children apiece should be added to those of the peers

living in 1828. The proper way to ascertain whether a set of people be prolific or sterile is, not to take

marriages selected from the mass either on account of their fruitfulness or on account of their sterility, but to

take a collection of marriages which there is no reason to think either more or less fruitful than others. What

reason is there to think that the marriages contracted by the peers who were alive in 1828 were more fruitful

We will add another passage from Mr Sadler's pamphlet on this subject. We attributed the extinction of

peerages partly to the fact that those honours are for the most part limited to heirs male.

"This is a discovery indeed! Peeresses 'eminently prolific,' do not, as Macbeth conjured his spouse, 'bring

forth menchildren only;' they actually produce daughters as well as sons!! Why, does not the Reviewer see,

that so long as the rule of nature, which proportions the sexes so accurately to each other, continues to exist, a

tendency to a diminution in one sex proves, as certainly as the demonstration of any mathematical problem, a

tendency to a diminution in both; but to talk of 'eminently prolific' peeresses, and still maintain that the rapid

extinction in peerages is owing to their not bearing male children exclusively, is arrant nonsense."

Now, if there be any proposition on the face of the earth which we should not have expected to hear

characterised as arrant nonsense, it is this,that an honour limited to males alone is more likely to become

extinct than an honour which, like the crown of England, descends indifferently to sons and daughters. We

have heard, nay, we actually know families, in which, much as Mr Sadler may marvel at it, there are

daughters and no sons. Nay, we know many such families. We are as much inclined as Mr Sadler to trace the

benevolent and wise arrangements of Providence in the physical world, when once we are satisfied as to the

facts on which we proceed. And we have always considered it as an arrangement deserving of the highest

admiration, that, though in families the number of males and females differs widely, yet in great collections

of human beings the disparity almost disappears. The chance undoubtedly is, that in a thousand marriages the

number of daughters will not very much exceed the number of sons. But the chance also is, that several of

those marriages will produce daughters, and daughters only. In every generation of the peerage there are

several such cases. When a peer whose title is limited to male heirs dies, leaving only daughters, his peerage

must expire, unless he have, not only a collateral heir, but a collateral heir descended through an

uninterrupted line of males from the first possessor of the honour. If the deceased peer was the first nobleman

of his family, then, by the supposition, his peerage will become extinct. If he was the second, it will become

extinct, unless he leaves a brother or a brother's son. If the second peer had a brother, the first peer must have

had at least two sons; and this is more than the average number of sons to a marriage in England. When,

therefore, it is considered how many peerages are in the first and second generation, it will not appear strange

that extinctions should frequently take place. There are peerages which descend to females as well as males.

But, in such cases, if a peer dies, leaving only daughters, the very fecundity of the marriage is a cause of the

extinction of the peerage. If there were only one daughter, the honour would descend. If there are several, it

But it is needless to multiply words in a case so clear; and, indeed it is needless to say anything more about

Mr Sadler's book. We have, if we do not deceive ourselves, completely exposed the calculations on which his

theory rests; and we do not think that we should either amuse our readers or serve the cause of science if we

were to rebut in succession a series of futile charges brought in the most angry spirit against ourselves;

ignorant imputations of ignorance, and unfair complaints of unfairness,conveyed in long, dreary,

declamations, so prolix that we cannot find space to quote them, and so confused that we cannot venture to

There is much indeed in this foolish pamphlet to laugh at, from the motto in the first page down to some

wisdom about cows in the last. One part of it indeed is solemn enough, we mean a certain jeu d'esprit of Mr

Sadler's touching a tract of Dr Arbuthnot's. This is indeed "very tragical mirth," as Peter Quince's playbill has

it; and we would not advise any person who reads for amusement to venture on it as long as he can procure a

volume of the Statutes at Large. This, however, to do Mr Sadler justice, is an exception. His witticisms, and

his tables of figures, constitute the only parts of his work which can be perused with perfect gravity. His

blunders are diverting, his excuses exquisitely comic. But his anger is the most grotesque exhibition that we

ever saw. He foams at the mouth with the love of truth, and vindicates the Divine benevolence with a most

edifying heartiness of hatred. On this subject we will give him one word of parting advice. If he raves in this

way to ease his mind, or because he thinks that he does himself credit by it, or from a sense of religious duty,

far be it from us to interfere. His peace, his reputation, and his religion are his own concern; and he, like the

nobleman to whom his treatise is dedicated, has a right to do what he will with his own. But, if he has

adopted his abusive style from a notion that it would hurt our feelings, we must inform him that he is

altogether mistaken; and that he would do well in future to give us his arguments, if he has any, and to keep

"Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, et sur les deux Premieres Assemblees Legislatives". Par Etienne Dumont, de

Geneve: ouvrage posthume publie par M.J.L. Duval, Membre du Conseil Representatif du Canton du Geneve.

This is a very amusing and a very instructive book: but even if it were less amusing and less instructive, it

would still be interesting as a relic of a wise and virtuous man. M. Dumont was one of those persons, the care

of whose fame belongs in an especial manner to mankind. For he was one of those persons who have, for the

sake of mankind, neglected the care of their own fame. In his walk through life there was no obtrusiveness,

no pushing, no elbowing, none of the little arts which bring forward little men. With every right to the head

of the board, he took the lowest room, and well deserved to be greeted withFriend, go up higher. Though

no man was more capable of achieving for himself a separate and independent renown, he attached himself to

others; he laboured to raise their fame; he was content to receive as his share of the reward the mere

overflowings which redounded from the full measure of their glory. Not that he was of a servile and

idolatrous habit of mind:not that he was one of the tribe of Boswells,those literary Gibeonites, born to

be hewers of wood and drawers of water to the higher intellectual castes. Possessed of talents and

acquirements which made him great, he wished only to be useful. In the prime of manhood, at the very time

of life at which ambitious men are most ambitious, he was not solicitous to proclaim that he furnished

information, arguments, and eloquence to Mirabeau. In his later years he was perfectly willing that his

The services which M. Dumont has rendered to society can be fully appreciated only by those who have

studied Mr Bentham's works, both in their rude and in their finished state. The difference both for show and

for use is as great as the difference between a lump of golden ore and a rouleau of sovereigns fresh from the

mint. Of Mr Bentham we would at all times speak with the reverence which is due to a great original thinker,

and to a sincere and ardent friend of the human race. If a few weaknesses were mingled with his eminent

virtues,if a few errors insinuated themselves among the many valuable truths which he taught,this is

assuredly no time for noticing those weaknesses or those errors in an unkind or sarcastic spirit. A great man

has gone from among us, full of years, of good works, and of deserved honours. In some of the highest

departments in which the human intellect can exert itself he has not left his equal or his second behind him.

From his contemporaries he has had, according to the usual lot, more or less than justice. He has had blind

flatterers and blind detractorsflatterers who could see nothing but perfection in his style, detractors who

could see nothing but nonsense in his matter. He will now have judges. Posterity will pronounce its calm and

impartial decision; and that decision will, we firmly believe, place in the same rank with Galileo, and with

Locke, the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish and left it a science. Never was there a literary

partnership so fortunate as that of Mr Bentham and M. Dumont. The raw material which Mr Bentham

furnished was most precious; but it was unmarketable. He was, assuredly, at once a great logician and a great

rhetorician. But the effect of his logic was injured by a vicious arrangement, and the effect of his rhetoric by a

vicious style. His mind was vigorous, comprehensive, subtile, fertile of arguments, fertile of illustrations. But

he spoke in an unknown tongue; and, that the congregation might be edified, it was necessary that some

brother having the gift of interpretation should expound the invaluable jargon. His oracles were of high

import; but they were traced on leaves and flung loose to the wind. So negligent was he of the arts of

selection, distribution, and compression, that to persons who formed their judgment of him from his works in

their undigested state he seemed to be the least systematic of all philosophers. The truth is, that his opinions

formed a system, which, whether sound or unsound, is more exact, more entire, and more consistent with

itself than any other. Yet to superficial readers of his works in their original form, and indeed to all readers of

those works who did not bring great industry and great acuteness to the study, he seemed to be a man of a

quick and ingenious but illregulated mind,who saw truth only by glimpses,who threw out many

striking hints, but who had never thought of combining his doctrines in one harmonious whole.

M. Dumont was admirably qualified to supply what was wanting in Mr Bentham. In the qualities in which the

French writers surpass those of all other nationsneatness, clearness, precision, condensationhe surpassed

all French writers. If M. Dumont had never been born, Mr Bentham would still have been a very great man.

But he would have been great to himself alone. The fertility of his mind would have resembled the fertility of

those vast American wildernesses in which blossoms and decays a rich but unprofitable vegetation,

"wherewith the reaper filleth not his hand, neither he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom." It would have

been with his discoveries as it has been with the "Century of Inventions." His speculations on laws would

have been of no more practical use than Lord Worcester's speculations on steamengines. Some generations

hence, perhaps, when legislation had found its Watt, an antiquarian might have published to the world the

curious fact that, in the reign of George the Third, there had been a man called Bentham, who had given hints

of many discoveries made since his time, and who had really, for his age, taken a most philosophical view of

Many persons have attempted to interpret between this powerful mind and the public. But, in our opinion, M.

Dumont alone has succeeded. It is remarkable that, in foreign countries, where Mr Bentham's works are

known solely through the medium of the French version, his merit is almost universally acknowledged. Even

those who are most decidedly opposed to his political opinions the very chiefs of the Holy Alliancehave

publicly testified their respect for him. In England, on the contrary, many persons who certainly entertained

no prejudice against him on political grounds were long in the habit of mentioning him contemptuously.

Indeed, what was said of Bacon's philosophy may be said of Bentham's. It was in little repute among us, till

judgments in its favour came from beyond sea, and convinced us, to our shame, that we had been abusing and

M. Dumont might easily have found employments more gratifying to personal vanity than that of arranging

works not his own. But he could have found no employment more useful or more truly honourable. The book

before us, hastily written as it is, contains abundant proof, if proof were needed, that he did not become an

editor because he wanted the talents which would have made him eminent as a writer.

Persons who hold democratical opinions, and who have been accustomed to consider M. Dumont as one of

their party, have been surprised and mortified to learn that he speaks with very little respect of the French

Revolution and of its authors. Some zealous Tories have naturally expressed great satisfaction at finding their

doctrines, in some respects, confirmed by the testimony of an unwilling witness. The date of the work, we

think, explains everything. If it had been written ten years earlier, or twenty years later, it would have been

very different from what it is. It was written, neither during the first excitement of the Revolution, nor at that

later period when the practical good produced by the Revolution had become manifest to the most prejudiced

observers; but in those wretched times when the enthusiasm had abated, and the solid advantages were not

yet fully seen. It was written in the year 1799,a year in which the most sanguine friend of liberty might

well feel some misgivings as to the effects of what the National Assembly had done. The evils which attend

every great change had been severely felt. The benefit was still to come. The pricea heavy pricehad

been paid. The thing purchased had not yet been delivered. Europe was swarming with French exiles. The

fleets and armies of the second coalition were victorious. Within France, the reign of terror was over; but the

reign of law had not commenced. There had been, indeed, during three or four years, a written Constitution,

by which rights were defined and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedly violated; and those

checks had proved utterly inefficient. The laws which had been framed to secure the distinct authority of the

executive magistrates and of the legislative assembliesthe freedom of electionthe freedom of

debatethe freedom of the pressthe personal freedom of citizenswere a dead letter. The ordinary mode

in which the Republic was governed was by coups d'etat. On one occasion, the legislative councils were

placed under military restraint by the directors. Then, again, directors were deposed by the legislative

councils. Elections were set aside by the executive authority. Shiploads of writers and speakers were sent,

without a legal trial, to die of fever in Guiana. France, in short, was in that state in which revolutions, effected

by violence, almost always leave a nation. The habit of obedience had been lost. The spell of prescription had

been broken. Those associations on which, far more than on any arguments about property and order, the

authority of magistrates rests, had completely passed away. The power of the government consisted merely in

the physical force which it could bring to its support. Moral force it had none. It was itself a government

sprung from a recent convulsion. Its own fundamental maxim was, that rebellion might be justifiable. Its own

existence proved that rebellion might be successful. The people had been accustomed, during several years,

to offer resistance to the constituted authorities on the slightest provocation, and to see the constituted

authorities yield to that resistance. The whole political world was "without form and void"an incessant

whirl of hostile atoms, which, every moment, formed some new combination. The only man who could fix

the agitated elements of society in a stable form was following a wild vision of glory and empire through the

when, out of the chaos into which the old society had been resolved, were to rise a new dynasty, a new

The dying words of Madame Roland, "Oh, Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!" were at

that time echoed by many of the most upright and benevolent of mankind. M. Guizot has, in one of his

admirable pamphlets, happily and justly described M. Laine as "an honest and liberal man, discouraged by

the Revolution." This description, at the time when M. Dumont's Memoirs were written, would have applied

to almost every honest and liberal man in Europe; and would, beyond all doubt, have applied to M. Dumont

himself. To that fanatical worship of the allwise and allgood people, which had been common a few years

before, had succeeded an uneasy suspicion that the follies and vices of the people would frustrate all attempts

to serve them. The wild and joyous exaltation, with which the meeting of the StatesGeneral and the fall of

the Bastile had been hailed, had passed away. In its place was dejection, and a gloomy distrust of suspicious

appearances. The philosophers and philanthropists had reigned. And what had their reign produced?

Philosophy had brought with it mummeries as absurd as any which had been practised by the most

superstitious zealot of the darkest age. Philanthropy had brought with it crimes as horrible as the massacre of

Saint Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These were the fruits of the great victory

of reason over prejudice. France had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that a

courtezan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted her freedom against Louis, that she

might bow down before Robespierre. For a time men thought that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth

century was folly; and that those hopes of great political and social ameliorations which had been cherished

Under the influence of these feelings, M. Dumont has gone so far as to say that the writings of Mr Burke on

the French Revolution, though disfigured by exaggeration, and though containing doctrines subversive of all

public liberty, had been, on the whole, justified by events, and had probably saved Europe from great

disasters. That such a man as the friend and fellow labourer of Mr Bentham should have expressed such an

opinion is a circumstance which well deserves the consideration of uncharitable politicians. These Memoirs

have not convinced us that the French Revolution was not a great blessing to mankind. But they have

convinced us that very great indulgence is due to those who, while the Revolution was actually taking place,

regarded it with unmixed aversion and horror. We can perceive where their error lay. We can perceive that

the evil was temporary, and the good durable. But we cannot be sure that, if our lot had been cast in their

times, we should not, like them, have been discouraged and disgustedthat we should not, like them, have

It is curious to observe how some men are applauded, and others reviled, for merely being what all their

neighbours are,for merely going passively down the stream of events,for merely representing the

opinions and passions of a whole generation. The friends of popular government ordinarily speak with

extreme severity of Mr Pitt, and with respect and tenderness of Mr Canning. Yet the whole difference, we

suspect, consisted merely in this,that Mr Pitt died in 1806, and Mr Canning in 1827. During the years

which were common to the public life of both, Mr Canning was assuredly not a more liberal statesman than

his patron. The truth is that Mr Pitt began his political life at the end of the American War, when the nation

was suffering from the effects of corruption. He closed it in the midst of the calamities produced by the

French Revolution, when the nation was still strongly impressed with the horrors of anarchy. He changed,

undoubtedly. In his youth he had brought in reform bills. In his manhood he brought in gagging bills. But the

change, though lamentable, was, in our opinion, perfectly natural, and might have been perfectly honest. He

changed with the great body of his countrymen. Mr Canning on the other hand, entered into public life when

Europe was in dread of the Jacobins. He closed his public life when Europe was suffering under the tyranny

of the Holy Alliance. He, too, changed with the nation. As the crimes of the Jacobins had turned the master

into something very like a Tory, the events which followed the Congress of Vienna turned the pupil into

So much are men the creatures of circumstances. We see that, if M. Dumont had died in 1799, he would have

died, to use the new cant word, a decided "Conservative." If Mr Pitt had lived in 1832, it is our firm belief

The judgment passed by M. Dumont in this work on the French Revolution must be taken with considerable

allowances. It resembles a criticism on a play of which only the first act has been performed, or on a building

from which the scaffolding has not yet been taken down. We have no doubt that, if the excellent author had

revised these Memoirs thirty years after the time at which they were written, he would have seen reason to

He would not probably have been inclined to retract the censures, just, though severe, which he has passed on

the ignorance, the presumption, and the pedantry, of the National Assembly. But he would have admitted

that, in spite of those faults, perhaps even by reason of those faults, that Assembly had conferred inestimable

benefits on mankind. It is clear that, among the French of that day, political knowledge was absolutely in its

infancy. It would indeed have been strange if it had attained maturity in the time of censors, of

lettresdecachet, and of beds of justice. The electors did not know how to elect. The representatives did not

know how to deliberate. M. Dumont taught the constituent body of Montreuil how to perform their functions,

and found them apt to learn. He afterwards tried, in concert with Mirabeau, to instruct the National Assembly

in that admirable system of Parliamentary tactics which has been long established in the English House of

Commons, and which has made the House of Commons, in spite of all the defects in its composition, the best

and fairest debating society in the world. But these accomplished legislators, though quite as ignorant as the

mob of Montreuil, proved much less docile, and cried out that they did not want to go to school to the

English. Their debates consisted of endless successions of trashy pamphlets, all beginning with something

about the original compact of society, man in the hunting state, and other such foolery. They sometimes

diversified and enlivened these long readings by a little rioting. They bawled; they hooted; they shook their

fists. They kept no order among themselves. They were insulted with impunity by the crowd which filled

their galleries. They gave long and solemn consideration to trifles. They hurried through the most important

resolutions with fearful expedition. They wasted months in quibbling about the words of that false and

childish Declaration of Rights on which they professed to found their new constitution, and which was at

irreconcilable variance with every clause of that constitution. They annihilated in a single night privileges,

many of which partook of the nature of property, and ought therefore to have been most delicately handled.

They are called the Constituent Assembly. Never was a name less appropriate. They were not constituent, but

the very reverse of constituent. They constituted nothing that stood or that deserved to last. They had not, and

they could not possibly have, the information or the habits of mind which are necessary for the framing of

that most exquisite of all machinesa government. The metaphysical cant with which they prefaced their

constitution has long been the scoff of all parties. Their constitution itself,that constitution which they

described as absolutely perfect, and to which they predicted immortality, disappeared in a few months, and

The glory of the National Assembly is this, that they were in truth, what Mr Burke called them in austere

irony, the ablest architects of ruin that ever the world saw. They were utterly incompetent to perform any

work which required a discriminating eye and a skilful hand. But the work which was then to be done was a

work of devastation. They had to deal with abuses so horrible and so deeply rooted that the highest political

wisdom could scarcely have produced greater good to mankind than was produced by their fierce and

senseless temerity. Demolition is undoubtedly a vulgar task; the highest glory of the statesman is to construct.

But there is a time for everything,a time to set up, and a time to pull down. The talents of revolutionary

leaders and those of the legislator have equally their use and their season. It is the natural, the almost

universal, law, that the age of insurrections and proscriptions shall precede the age of good government, of

And how should it be otherwise? It is not in swaddlingbands that we learn to walk. It is not in the dark that

we learn to distinguish colours. It is not under oppression that we learn how to use freedom. The ordinary

sophism by which misrule is defended is, when truly stated, this:The people must continue in slavery,

because slavery has generated in them all the vices of slaves. Because they are ignorant, they must remain

under a power which has made and which keeps them ignorant. Because they have been made ferocious by

misgovernment, they must be misgoverned for ever. If the system under which they live were so mild and

liberal that under its operation they had become humane and enlightened, it would be safe to venture on a

change. But, as this system has destroyed morality, and prevented the development of the intellect,as it has

turned men, who might under different training have formed a virtuous and happy community, into savage

and stupid wild beasts,therefore it ought to last for ever. The English Revolution, it is said, was truly a

glorious Revolution. Practical evils were redressed; no excesses were committed; no sweeping confiscations

took place; the authority of the laws was scarcely for a moment suspended; the fullest and freest discussion

was tolerated in Parliament; the nation showed, by the calm and temperate manner in which it asserted its

liberty, that it was fit to enjoy liberty. The French Revolution was, on the other hand, the most horrible event

recorded in history,all madness and wickedness,absurdity in theory, and atrocity in practice. What folly

and injustice in the revolutionary laws! What grotesque affectation in the revolutionary ceremonies! What

fanaticism! What licentiousness! What cruelty! Anacharsis Clootz and Marat,feasts of the Supreme Being,

and marriages of the Loiretrees of liberty, and heads dancing on pikesthe whole forms a kind of infernal

farce, made up of everything ridiculous, and everything frightful. This it is to give freedom to those who have

It is not only by bad men interested in the defence of abuses that arguments like these have been urged

against all schemes of political improvement. Some of the highest and purest of human beings conceived

such scorn and aversion for the follies and crimes of the French Revolution that they recanted, in the moment

of triumph, those liberal opinions to which they had clung in defiance of persecution. And, if we inquire why

it was that they began to doubt whether liberty were a blessing, we shall find that it was only because events

had proved, in the clearest manner, that liberty is the parent of virtue and of order. They ceased to abhor

tyranny merely because it had been signally shown that the effect of tyranny on the hearts and understandings

of men is more demoralising and more stupifying than had ever been imagined by the most zealous friend of

popular rights. The truth is, that a stronger argument against the old monarchy of France may be drawn from

the noyades and the fusillades than from the Bastile and the Parcauxcerfs. We believe it to be a rule

without an exception, that the violence of a revolution corresponds to the degree of misgovernment which has

produced that revolution. Why was the French Revolution so bloody and destructive? Why was our

revolution of 1641 comparatively mild? Why was our revolution of 1688 milder still? Why was the American

Revolution, considered as an internal movement, the mildest of all? There is an obvious and complete

solution of the problem. The English under James the First and Charles the First were less oppressed than the

French under Louis the Fifteenth and Louis the Sixteenth. The English were less oppressed after the

Restoration than before the great Rebellion. And America under George the Third was less oppressed than

England under the Stuarts. The reaction was exactly proportioned to the pressure, the vengeance to the

When Mr Burke was reminded in his later years of the zeal which he had displayed in the cause of the

Americans, he vindicated himself from the charge of inconsistency, by contrasting the wisdom and

moderation of the Colonial insurgents of 1776 with the fanaticism and wickedness of the Jacobins of 1792.

He was in fact bringing an argument a fortiori against himself. The circumstances on which he rested his

vindication fully proved that the old government of France stood in far more need of a complete change than

the old government of America. The difference between Washington and Robespierre,the difference

between Franklin and Barere,the difference between the destruction of a few barrels of tea and the

confiscation of thousands of square miles,the difference between the tarring and feathering of a

taxgatherer and the massacres of September, measure the difference between the government of America

under the rule of England and the government of France under the rule of the Bourbons.

Louis the Sixteenth made great voluntary concessions to his people; and they sent him to the scaffold.

Charles the Tenth violated the fundamental laws of the state, established a despotism, and butchered his

subjects for not submitting quietly to that despotism. He failed in his wicked attempt. He was at the mercy of

those whom he had injured. The pavements of Paris were still heaped up in barricades;the hospitals were

still full of the wounded;the dead were still unburied;a thousand families were in mourning;a

hundred thousand citizens were in arms. The crime was recent;the life of the criminal was in the hands of

the sufferers;and they touched not one hair of his head. In the first revolution, victims were sent to death

by scores for the most trifling acts proved by the lowest testimony, before the most partial tribunals. After the

second revolution, those ministers who had signed the ordinances, those ministers, whose guilt, as it was of

the foulest kind, was proved by the clearest evidence,were punished only with imprisonment. In the first

revolution, property was attacked. In the second, it was held sacred. Both revolutions, it is true, left the public

mind of France in an unsettled state. Both revolutions were followed by insurrectionary movements. But,

after the first revolution, the insurgents were almost always stronger than the law; and, since the second

revolution, the law has invariably been found stronger than the insurgents. There is, indeed, much in the

present state of France which may well excite the uneasiness of those who desire to see her free, happy,

powerful, and secure. Yet, if we compare the present state of France with the state in which she was forty

years ago, how vast a change for the better has taken place! How little effect, for example, during the first

revolution, would the sentence of a judicial body have produced on an armed and victorious partty! If, after

the 10th of August, or after the proscription of the Gironde, or after the 9th of Thermidor, or after the carnage

of Vendemiaire, or after the arrests of Fructidor, any tribunal had decided against the conquerors in favour of

the conquered, with what contempt, with what derision, would its award have been received! The judges

would have lost their heads, or would have been sent to die in some unwholesome colony. The fate of the

victim whom they had endeavoured to save would only have been made darker and more hopeless by their

interference. We have lately seen a signal proof that, in France, the law is now stronger than the sword. We

have seen a government, in the very moment of triumph and revenge, submitting itself to the authority of a

court of law. A just and independent sentence has been pronounceda sentence worthy of the ancient

renown of that magistracy to which belong the noblest recollections of French historywhich, in an age of

persecutors, produced L'Hopital,which, in an age of courtiers, produced D'Aguesseau,which, in an age

of wickedness and madness, exhibited to mankind a pattern of every virtue in the life and in the death of

Malesherbes. The respectful manner in which that sentence has been received is alone sufficient to show how

widely the French of this generation differ from their fathers. And how is the difference to be explained? The

race, the soil, the climate, are the same. If those dull, honest Englishmen, who explain the events of 1793 and

1794 by saying that the French are naturally frivolous and cruel, were in the right, why is the guillotine now

standing idle? Not surely for want of Carlists, of aristocrats, of people guilty of incivism, of people suspected

of being suspicious characters. Is not the true explanation this, that the Frenchman of 1832 has been far better

governed than the Frenchman of 1789,that his soul has never been galled by the oppressive privileges of a

separate caste,that he has been in some degree accustomed to discuss political questions, and to perform

political functions,that he has lived for seventeen or eighteen years under institutions which, however

defective, have yet been far superior to any institutions that had before existed in France?

As the second French Revolution has been far milder than the first, so that great change which has just been

effected in England has been milder even than the second French Revolution, milder than any revolution

recorded in history. Some orators have described the reform of the House of Commons as a revolution.

Others have denied the propriety of the term. The question, though in seeming merely a question of

definition, suggests much curious and interesting matter for reflection. If we look at the magnitude of the

reform, it may well be called a revolution. If we look at the means by which it has been effected, it is merely

an Act of Parliament, regularly brought in, read, committed, and passed. In the whole history of England,

there is no prouder circumstance than this,that a change, which could not, in any other age, or in any other

country, have been effected without physical violence, should here have been effected by the force of reason,

and under the forms of law. The work of three civil wars has been accomplished by three sessions of

Parliament. An ancient and deeply rooted system of abuses has been fiercely attacked and stubbornly

defended. It has fallen; and not one sword has been drawn; not one estate has been confiscated; not one

family has been forced to emigrate. The bank has kept its credit. The funds have kept their price. Every man

has gone forth to his work and to his labour till the evening. During the fiercest excitement of the

contest,during the first fortnight of that immortal May,there was not one moment at which any

sanguinary act committed on the person of any of the most unpopular men in England would not have filled

And now that the victory is won, has it been abused? An immense mass of power has been transferred from

an oligarchy to the nation. Are the members of the vanquished oligarchy insecure? Does the nation seem

disposed to play the tyrant? Are not those who, in any other state of society, would have been visited with the

severest vengeance of the triumphant party,would have been pining in dungeons, or flying to foreign

countries,still enjoying their possessions and their honours, still taking part as freely as ever in public

affairs? Two years ago they were dominant. They are now vanquished. Yet the whole people would regard

with horror any man who should dare to propose any vindictive measure. So common is this feeling,so

much is it a matter of course among us,that many of our readers will scarcely understand what we see to

To what are we to attribute the unparalleled moderation and humanity which the English people had

displayed at this great conjuncture? The answer is plain. This moderation, this humanity, are the fruits of a

hundred and fifty years of liberty. During many generations we have had legislative assemblies which,

however defective their constitution might be, have always contained many members chosen by the people,

and many others eager to obtain the approbation of the people:assemblies in which perfect freedom of

debate was allowed;assemblies in which the smallest minority had a fair hearing; assemblies in which

abuses, even when they were not redressed, were at least exposed. For many generations we have had the trial

by jury, the Habeas Corpus Act, the freedom of the press, the right of meeting to discuss public affairs, the

right of petitioning the legislature. A vast portion of the population has long been accustomed to the exercise

of political functions, and has been thoroughly seasoned to political excitement. In most other countries there

is no middle course between absolute submission and open rebellion. In England there has always been for

centuries a constitutional opposition. Thus our institutions had been so good that they had educated us into a

capacity for better institutions. There is not a large town in the kingdom which does not contain better

materials for a legislature than all France could furnish in 1789. There is not a spoutingclub at any

pothouse in London in which the rules of debate are not better understood, and more strictly observed, than

in the Constituent Assembly. There is scarcely a Political Union which could not frame in half an hour a

declaration of rights superior to that which occupied the collective wisdom of France for several months.

It would be impossible even to glance at all the causes of the French Revolution within the limits to which we

must confine ourselves. One thing is clear. The government, the aristocracy, and the church were rewarded

after their works. They reaped that which they had sown. They found the nation such as they had made it.

That the people had become possessed of irresistible power before they had attained the slightest knowledge

of the art of governmentthat practical questions of vast moment were left to be solved by men to whom

politics had been only matter of theory that a legislature was composed of persons who were scarcely fit to

compose a debating societythat the whole nation was ready to lend an ear to any flatterer who appealed to

its cupidity, to its fears, or to its thirst for vengeanceall this was the effect of misrule, obstinately continued

in defiance of solemn warnings, and of the visible signs of an approaching retribution.

Even while the monarchy seemed to be in its highest and most palmy state, the causes of that great

destruction had already begun to operate. They may be distinctly traced even under the reign of Louis the

Fourteenth. That reign is the time to which the UltraRoyalists refer as the Golden Age of France. It was in

truth one of those periods which shine with an unnatural and delusive splendour, and which are rapidly

Concerning Louis the Fourteenth himself, the world seems at last to have formed a correct judgment. He was

not a great general; he was not a great statesman; but he was, in one sense of the words, a great king. Never

was there so consummate a master of what our James the First would have called kingcraft,of all those arts

which most advantageously display the merits of a prince, and most completely hide his defects. Though his

internal administration was bad,though the military triumphs which gave splendour to the early part of his

reign were not achieved by himself,though his later years were crowded with defeats and

humiliations,though he was so ignorant that he scarcely understood the Latin of his massbook,though

he fell under the control of a cunning Jesuit and of a more cunning old woman,he succeeded in passing

himself off on his people as a being above humanity. And this is the more extraordinary because he did not

seclude himself from the public gaze like those Oriental despots whose faces are never seen, and whose very

names it is a crime to pronounce lightly. It has been said that no man is a hero to his valet;and all the world

saw as much of Louis the Fourteenth as his valet could see. Five hundred people assembled to see him shave

and put on his breeches in the morning. He then kneeled down at the side of his bed, and said his prayer while

the whole assembly awaited the end in solemn silencethe ecclesiastics on their knees, and the laymen with

their hats before their faces. He walked about his gardens with a train of two hundred courtiers at his heels.

All Versailles came to see him dine and sup. He was put to bed at night in the midst of a crowd as great as

that which had met to see him rise in the morning. He took his very emetics in state, and vomited majestically

in the presence of all the grandes and petites entrees. Yet, though he constantly exposed himself to the public

gaze in situations in which it is scarcely possible for any man to preserve much personal dignity, he to the last

impressed those who surrounded him with the deepest awe and reverence. The illusion which he produced on

his worshippers can be compared only to those illusions to which lovers are proverbially subject during the

season of courtship. It was an illusion which affected even the senses. The contemporaries of Louis thought

him tall. Voltaire, who might have seen him, and who had lived with some of the most distinguished

members of his court, speaks repeatedly of his majestic stature. Yet it is as certain as any fact can be, that he

was rather below than above the middle size. He had, it seems, a way of holding himself, a way of walking, a

way of swelling his chest and rearing his head, which deceived the eyes of the multitude. Eighty years after

his death, the royal cemetery was violated by the revolutionists, his coffin was opened; his body was dragged

out; and it appeared that the prince, whose majestic figure had been so long and loudly extolled, was in truth

a little man. (Even M. de Chateaubriand, to whom we should have thought all the Bourbons would have

seemed at least six feet high, admits this fact. "C'est une erreur," says he in his strange memoirs of the Duke

of Berri, "de croire que Louis XIV. etait d'une haute stature. Une cuirasse qui nous reste de lui, et les

exhumations de St Denys, n'ont laisse sur certain point aucun doute.") That fine expression of Juvenal is

singularly applicable, both in its literal and in its metaphorical sense, to Louis the Fourteenth:

His person and his government have had the same fate. He had the art of making both appear grand and

august, in spite of the clearest evidence that both were below the ordinary standard. Death and time have

exposed both the deceptions. The body of the great king has been measured more justly than it was measured

by the courtiers who were afraid to look above his shoetie. His public character has been scrutinized by men

free from the hopes and fears of Boileau and Moliere. In the grave, the most majestic of princes is only five

feet eight. In history, the hero and the politician dwindles into a vain and feeble tyrant, the slave of priests

and womenlittle in war,little in government,little in everything but the art of simulating greatness.

He left to his infant successor a famished and miserable people, a beaten and humbled army, provinces turned

into deserts by misgovernment and persecution, factions dividing the court, a schism raging in the church, an

immense debt, an empty treasury, immeasurable palaces, an innumerable household, inestimable jewels and

furniture. All the sap and nutriment of the state seemed to have been drawn to feed one bloated and

unwholesome excrescence. The nation was withered. The court was morbidly flourishing. Yet it does not

appear that the associations which attached the people to the monarchy had lost strength during his reign. He

had neglected or sacrificed their dearest interests; but he had struck their imaginations. The very things which

ought to have made him most unpopular,the prodigies of luxury and magnificence with which his person

was surrounded, while, beyond the inclosure of his parks, nothing was to be seen but starvation and

despair,seemed to increase the respectful attachment which his subjects felt for him. That governments

exist only for the good of the people, appears to be the most obvious and simple of all truths. Yet history

proves that it is one of the most recondite. We can scarcely wonder that it should be so seldom present to the

minds of rulers, when we see how slowly, and through how much suffering, nations arrive at the knowledge

There was indeed one Frenchman who had discovered those principles which it now seems impossible to

miss,that the many are not made for the use of one,that the truly good government is not that which

concentrates magnificence in a court, but that which diffuses happiness among a people,that a king who

gains victory after victory, and adds province to province, may deserve, not the admiration, but the

abhorrence and contempt of mankind. These were the doctrines which Fenelon taught. Considered as an epic

poem, Telemachus can scarcely be placed above Glover's Leonidas or Wilkie's Epigoniad. Considered as a

treatise on politics and morals, it abounds with errors of detail; and the truths which it inculcates seem trite to

a modern reader. But, if we compare the spirit in which it is written with the spirit which pervades the rest of

the French literature of that age, we shall perceive that, though in appearance trite, it was in truth one of the

most original works that have ever appeared. The fundamental principles of Fenelon's political morality, the

test by which he judged of institutions and of men, were absolutely new to his countrymen. He had taught

them indeed, with the happiest effect, to his royal pupil. But how incomprehensible they were to most people,

we learn from Saint Simon. That amusing writer tells us, as a thing almost incredible, that the Duke of

Burgundy declared it to be his opinion that kings existed for the good of the people, and not the people for the

good of kings. Saint Simon is delighted with the benevolence of this saying; but startled by its novelty and

terrified by its boldness. Indeed he distinctly says that it was not safe to repeat the sentiment in the court of

Louis. Saint Simon was, of all the members of that court, the least courtly. He was as nearly an oppositionist

as any man of his time. His disposition was proud, bitter, and cynical. In religion he was a Jansenist; in

politics, a less hearty royalist than most of his neighbours. His opinions and his temper had preserved him

from the illusions which the demeanour of Louis produced on others. He neither loved nor respected the king.

Yet even this man,one of the most liberal men in France,was struck dumb with astonishment at hearing

the fundamental axiom of all government propounded,an axiom which, in our time, nobody in England or

France would dispute,which the stoutest Tory takes for granted as much as the fiercest Radical, and

concerning which the Carlist would agree with the most republican deputy of the "extreme left." No person

will do justice to Fenelon, who does not constantly keep in mind that Telemachus was written in an age and

nation in which bold and independent thinkers stared to hear that twenty millions of human beings did not

exist for the gratification of one. That work is commonly considered as a schoolbook, very fit for children,

because its style is easy and its morality blameless, but unworthy of the attention of statesmen and

philosophers. We can distinguish in it, if we are not greatly mistaken, the first faint dawn of a long and

splendid day of intellectual light,the dim promise of a great deliverance,the undeveloped germ of the

What mighty interests were staked on the life of the Duke of Burgundy! and how different an aspect might

the history of France have borne if he had attained the age of his grandfather or of his son;if he had been

permitted to show how much could be done for humanity by the highest virtue in the highest fortune! There

is scarcely anything in history more remarkable than the descriptions which remain to us of that extraordinary

man. The fierce and impetuous temper which he showed in early youth,the complete change which a

judicious education produced in his character,his fervid piety,his large benevolence,the strictness

with which he judged himself,the liberality with which he judged others,the fortitude with which alone,

in the whole court, he stood up against the commands of Louis, when a religious scruple was

concerned,the charity with which alone, in the whole court, he defended the profligate Orleans against

calumniators,his great projects for the good of the people, his activity in business,his taste for

letters,his strong domestic attachments,even the ungraceful person and the shy and awkward manner

which concealed from the eyes of the sneering courtiers of his grandfather so many rare endowments,make

his character the most interesting that is to be found in the annals of his house. He had resolved, if he came to

the throne, to disperse that ostentatious court, which was supported at an expense ruinous to the nation,to

preserve peace,to correct the abuses which were found in every part of the system of revenue,to abolish

or modify oppressive privileges,to reform the administration of justice,to revive the institution of the

StatesGeneral. If he had ruled over France during forty or fifty years, that great movement of the human

mind, which no government could have arrested, which bad government only rendered more violent, would,

we are inclined to think, have been conducted, by peaceable means to a happy termination.

Disease and sorrow removed from the world that wisdom and virtue of which it was not worthy. During two

generations France was ruled by men who, with all the vices of Louis the Fourteenth, had none of the art by

which that magnificent prince passed off his vices for virtues. The people had now to see tyranny naked. That

foul Duessa was stripped of her gorgeous ornaments. She had always been hideous; but a strange

enchantment had made her seem fair and glorious in the eyes of her willing slaves. The spell was now

broken; the deformity was made manifest; and the lovers, lately so happy and so proud, turned away loathing

First came the Regency. The strictness with which Louis had, towards the close of his life, exacted from those

around him an outward attention to religious duties, produced an effect similar to that which the rigour of the

Puritans had produced in England. It was the boast of Madame de Maintenon, in the time of her greatness,

that devotion had become the fashion. A fashion indeed it was; and, like a fashion, it passed away. The

austerity of the tyrant's old age had injured the morality of the higher orders more than even the

licentiousness of his youth. Not only had he not reformed their vices, but, by forcing them to be hypocrites,

he had shaken their belief in virtue. They had found it so easy to perform the grimace of piety, that it was

natural for them to consider all piety as grimace. The times were changed. Pensions, regiments, and abbeys,

were no longer to be obtained by regular confession and severe penance: and the obsequious courtiers, who

had kept Lent like monks of La Trappe, and who had turned up the whites of their eyes at the edifying parts

of sermons preached before the king, aspired to the title of roue as ardently as they had aspired to that of

devot; and went, during Passion Week, to the revels of the Palais Royal as readily as they had formerly

The Regent was in many respects the facsimile of our Charles the Second. Like Charles, he was a

goodnatured man, uttl destitute of sensibility. Like Charles, he had good natural talents, which a deplorable

indolence rendered useless to the state. Like Charles, he thought all men corrupted and interested, and yet did

not dislike them for being so. His opinion of human nature was Gulliver's; but he did not regard human nature

with Gulliver's horror. He thought that he and his fellowcreatures were Yahoos; and he thought a Yahoo a

very agreeable kind of animal. No princes were ever more social than Charles and Philip of Orleans: yet no

princes ever had less capacity for friendship. The tempers of these clever cynics were so easy, and their

minds so languid, that habit supplied in them the place of affection, and made them the tools of people for

whom they cared not one straw. In love, both were mere sensualists without delicacy or tenderness. In

politics, both were utterly careless of faith and of national honour. Charles shut up the Exchequer. Philip

patronised the System. The councils of Charles were swayed by the gold of Barillon; the councils of Philip by

the gold of Walpole. Charles for private objects made war on Holland, the natural ally of England. Philip for

private objects made war on the Spanish branch of the house of Bourbon, the natural ally, indeed the creature

of France. Even in trifling circumstances the parallel might be carried on. Both these princes were fond of

experimental philosophy, and passed in the laboratory much time which would have been more

advantageously passed at the counciltable. Both were more strongly attached to their female relatives than

to any other human being; and in both cases it was suspected that this attachment was not perfectly innocent.

In personal courage, and in all the virtues which are connected with personal courage, the Regent was

indisputably superior to Charles. Indeed Charles but narrowly escaped the stain of cowardice. Philip was

eminently brave, and, like most brave men, was generally open and sincere. Charles added dissimulation to

The administration of the Regent was scarcely less pernicious, and infinitely more scandalous, than that of

the deceased monarch. It was by magnificent public works, and by wars conducted on a gigantic scale, that

Louis had brought distress on his people. The Regent aggravated that distress by frauds of which a lame duck

on the stockexchange would have been ashamed. France, even while suffering under the most severe

When Orleans and the wretched Dubois had disappeared, the power passed to the Duke of Bourbon; a prince

degraded in the public eye by the infamously lucrative part which he had taken in the juggles of the System,

and by the humility with which he bore the caprices of a loose and imperious woman. It seemed to be decreed

that every branch of the royal family should successively incur the abhorrence and contempt of the nation.

Between the fall of the Duke of Bourbon and the death of Fleury, a few years of frugal and moderate

government intervened. Then recommenced the downward progress of the monarchy. Profligacy in the court,

extravagance in the finances, schism in the church, faction in the Parliaments, unjust war terminated by

ignominious peace,all that indicates and all that produces the ruin of great empires, make up the history of

that miserable period. Abroad, the French were beaten and humbled everywhere, by land and by sea, on the

Elbe and on the Rhine, in Asia and in America. At home, they were turned over from vizier to vizier, and

from sultana to sultana, till they had reached that point beneath which there was no lower abyss of

infamy,till the yoke of Maupeou had made them pine for Choiseul,till Madame du Barri had taught

But unpopular as the monarchy had become, the aristocracy was more unpopular still; and not without

reason. The tyranny of an individual is far more supportable than the tyranny of a caste. The old privileges

were galling and hateful to the new wealth and the new knowledge. Everything indicated the approach of no

common revolution,of a revolution destined to change, not merely the form of government, but the

distribution of property and the whole social system,of a revolution the effects of which were to be felt at

every fireside in France,of a new Jaquerie, in which the victory was to remain with Jaques bonhomme. In

the van of the movement were the moneyed men and the men of letters,the wounded pride of wealth, and

the wounded pride of intellect. An immense multitude, made ignorant and cruel by oppression, was raging in

We greatly doubt whether any course which could have been pursued by Louis the Sixteenth could have

averted a great convulsion. But we are sure that, if there was such a course, it was the course recommended

by M. Turgot. The church and the aristocracy, with that blindness to danger, that incapacity of believing that

anything can be except what has been, which the long possession of power seldom fails to generate, mocked

at the counsel which might have saved them. They would not have reform; and they had revolution. They

would not pay a small contribution in place of the odious corvees; and they lived to see their castles

demolished, and their lands sold to strangers. They would not endure Turgot; and they were forced to endure

Then the rulers of France, as if smitten with judicial blindness, plunged headlong into the American war.

They thus committed at once two great errors. They encouraged the spirit of revolution. They augmented at

the same time those public burdens, the pressure of which is generally the immediate cause of revolutions.

The event of the war carried to the height the enthusiasm of speculative democrats. The financial difficulties

produced by the war carried to the height the discontent of that larger body of people who cared little about

The meeting of the StatesGeneral was the signal for the explosion of all the hoarded passions of a century.

In that assembly, there were undoubtedly very able men. But they had no practical knowledge of the art of

government. All the great English revolutions have been conducted by practical statesmen. The French

Revolution was conducted by mere speculators. Our constitution has never been so far behind the age as to

have become an object of aversion to the people. The English revolutions have therefore been undertaken for

the purpose of defending, correcting, and restoring,never for the mere purpose of destroying. Our

countrymen have always, even in times of the greatest excitement, spoken reverently of the form of

government under which they lived, and attacked only what they regarded as its corruptions. In the very act

of innovating they have constantly appealed to ancient prescription; they have seldom looked abroad for

models; they have seldom troubled themselves with Utopian theories; they have not been anxious to prove

that liberty is a natural right of men; they have been content to regard it as the lawful birthright of

Englishmen. Their social contract is no fiction. It is still extant on the original parchment, sealed with wax

which was affixed at Runnymede, and attested by the lordly names of the Marischals and Fitzherberts. No

general arguments about the original equality of men, no fine stories out of Plutarch and Cornelius Nepos,

have ever affected them so much as their own familiar words,Magna Charta,Habeas Corpus,Trial by

Jury,Bill of Rights. This part of our national character has undoubtedly its disadvantages. An Englishman

too often reasons on politics in the spirit rather of a lawyer than of a philosopher. There is too often

something narrow, something exclusive, something Jewish, if we may use the word, in his love of freedom.

He is disposed to consider popular rights as the special heritage of the chosen race to which he belongs. He is

inclined rather to repel than to encourage the alien proselyte who aspires to a share of his privileges. Very

different was the spirit of the Constituent Assembly. They had none of our narrowness; but they had none of

our practical skill in the management of affairs. They did not understand how to regulate the order of their

own debates; and they thought themselves able to legislate for the whole world. All the past was loathsome to

them. All their agreeable associations were connected with the future. Hopes were to them all that

recollections are to us. In the institutions of their country they found nothing to love or to admire. As far back

as they could look, they saw only the tyranny of one class and the degradation of another,Frank and Gaul,

knight and villein, gentleman and roturier. They hated the monarchy, the church, the nobility. They cared

nothing for the States or the Parliament. It was long the fashion to ascribe all the follies which they

committed to the writings of the philosophers. We believe that it was misrule, and nothing but misrule, that

put the sting into those writings. It is not true that the French abandoned experience for theories. They took

up with theories because they had no experience of good government. It was because they had no charter that

they ranted about the original contract. As soon as tolerable institutions were given to them, they began to

look to those institutions. In 1830 their rallying cry was "Vive la Charte". In 1789 they had nothing but

theories round which to rally. They had seen social distinctions only in a bad form; and it was therefore

natural that they should be deluded by sophisms about the equality of men. They had experienced so much

evil from the sovereignty of kings that they might be excused for lending a ready ear to those who preached,

The English, content with their own national recollections and names, have never sought for models in the

institutions of Greece or Rome. The French, having nothing in their own history to which they could look

back with pleasure, had recourse to the history of the great ancient commonwealths: they drew their notions

of those commonwealths, not from contemporary writers, but from romances written by pedantic moralists

long after the extinction of public liberty. They neglected Thucydides for Plutarch. Blind themselves, they

took blind guides. They had no experience of freedom; and they took their opinions concerning it from men

who had no more experience of it than themselves, and whose imaginations, inflamed by mystery and

privation, exaggerated the unknown enjoyment;from men who raved about patriotism without having ever

had a country, and eulogised tyrannicide while crouching before tyrants. The maxim which the French

legislators learned in this school was, that political liberty is an end, and not a means; that it is not merely

valuable as the great safeguard of order, of property, and of morality, but that it is in itself a high and

exquisite happiness to which order, property, and morality ought without one scruple to be sacrificed. The

lessons which may be learned from ancient history are indeed most useful and important; but they were not

likely to be learned by men who, in all their rhapsodies about the Athenian democracy, seemed utterly to

forget that in that democracy there were ten slaves to one citizen; and who constantly decorated their

invectives against the aristocrats with panegyrics on Brutus and Cato,two aristocrats, fiercer, prouder, and

We have never met with so vivid and interesting a picture of the National Assembly as that which M.

Dumont has set before us. His Mirabeau, in particular, is incomparable. All the former Mirabeaus were daubs

in comparison. Some were merely painted from the imaginationothers were gross caricatures: this is the

very individual, neither god nor demon, but a mana Frenchmana Frenchman of the eighteenth century,

with great talents, with strong passions, depraved by bad education, surrounded by temptations of every

kind,made desperate at one time by disgrace, and then again intoxicated by fame. All his opposite and

seemingly inconsistent qualities are in this representation so blended together as to make up a harmonious

and natural whole. Till now, Mirabeau was to us, and, we believe, to most readers of history, not a man, but a

string of antitheses. Henceforth he will be a real human being, a remarkable and eccentric being indeed, but

He was fond, M. Dumont tells us, of giving odd compound nicknames. Thus, M. de Lafayette was

GrandisonCromwell; the King of Prussia was AlaricCottin; D'Espremenil was Crispin Catiline. We think

that Mirabeau himself might be described, after his own fashion, as a WilkesChatham. He had Wilkes's

sensuality, Wilkes's levity, Wilkes's insensibility to shame. Like Wilkes, he had brought on himself the

censure even of men of pleasure by the peculiar grossness of his immorality, and by the obscenity of his

writings. Like Wilkes, he was heedless, not only of the laws of morality, but of the laws of honour. Yet he

affected, like Wilkes, to unite the character of the demagogue to that of the fine gentleman. Like Wilkes, he

conciliated, by his goodhumour and his high spirits, the regard of many who despised his character. Like

Wilkes, he was hideously ugly; like Wilkes, he made a jest of his own ugliness; and, like Wilkes, he was, in

spite of his ugliness, very attentive to his dress, and very successful in affairs of gallantry.

Resembling Wilkes in the lower and grosser parts of his character, he had, in his higher qualities, some

affinity to Chatham. His eloquence, as far as we can judge of it, bore no inconsiderable resemblance to that of

the great English minister. He was not eminently successful in long set speeches. He was not, on the other

hand, a close and ready debater. Sudden bursts, which seemed to be the effect of inspirationshort sentences

which came like lightning, dazzling, burning, striking down everything before themsentences which,

spoken at critical moments, decided the fate of great questionssentences which at once became

proverbssentences which everybody still knows by heartin these chiefly lay the oratorical power both of

Chatham and of Mirabeau. There have been far greater speakers, and far greater statesmen, than either of

them; but we doubt whether any men have, in modern times, exercised such vast personal influence over

stormy and divided assemblies. The power of both was as much moral as intellectual. In true dignity of

character, in private and public virtue, it may seem absurd to institute any comparison between them; but they

had the same haughtiness and vehemence of temper. In their language and manner there was a disdainful

selfconfidence, an imperiousness, a fierceness of passion, before which all common minds quailed. Even

Murray and Charles Townshend, though intellectually not inferior to Chatham, were always cowed by him.

Barnave, in the same manner, though the best debater in the National Assembly, flinched before the energy of

Mirabeau. Men, except in bad novels, are not all good or all evil. It can scarcely be denied that the virtue of

Lord Chatham was a little theatrical. On the other hand there was in Mirabeau, not indeed anything deserving

the name of virtue, but that imperfect substitute for virtue which is found in almost all superior minds,a

sensibility to the beautiful and the good, which sometimes amounted to sincere enthusiasm; and which,

mingled with the desire of admiration, sometimes gave to his character a lustre resembling the lustre of true

goodness,as the "faded splendour wan" which lingered round the fallen archangel resembled the exceeding

There are several other admirable portraits of eminent men in these Memoirs. That of Sieyes in particular,

and that of Talleyrand, are masterpieces, full of life and expression. But nothing in the book has interested

us more than the view which M. Dumont has presented to us, unostentatiously, and, we may say,

unconsciously, of his own character. The sturdy rectitude, the large charity, the goodnature, the modesty,

the independent spirit, the ardent philanthropy, the unaffected indifference to money and to fame, make up a

character which, while it has nothing unnatural, seems to us to approach nearer to perfection than any of the

Grandisons and Allworthys of fiction. The work is not indeed precisely such a work as we had

anticipatedit is more lively, more picturesque, more amusing than we had promised ourselves; and it is, on

the other hand, less profound and philosophic. But, if it is not, in all respects, such as might have been

expected from the intellect of M. Dumont, it is assuredly such as might have been expected from his heart.

"Memoires de Bertrand Barere": publies par MM. Hippolyte Carnot, Membre de la Chambre des Deputes, et

David d'Angers, Membre de l'Institut: precedes d'une Notice Historique par H. Carnot. 4 tomes. Paris: 1843.

This book has more than one title to our serious attention. It is an appeal, solemnly made to posterity by a

man who played a conspicuous part in great events, and who represents himself as deeply aggrieved by the

rash and malevolent censure of his contemporaries. To such an appeal we shall always give ready audience.

We can perform no duty more useful to society, or more agreeable to our own feelings, than that of making,

as far as our power extends, reparation to the slandered and persecuted benefactors of mankind. We therefore

promptly took into our consideration this copious apology for the life of Bertrand Barere. We have made up

our minds; and we now purpose to do him, by the blessing of God, full and signal justice. It is to be observed

that the appellant in this case does not come into court alone. He is attended to the bar of public opinion by

two compurgators who occupy highly honourable stations. One of these is M. David of Angers, member of

the institute, an eminent sculptor, and, if we have been rightly informed, a favourite pupil, though not a

kinsman, of the painter who bore the same name. The other, to whom we owe the biographical preface, is M.

Hippolyte Carnot, member of the Chamber of Deputies, and son of the celebrated Director. In the judgment

of M. David and of M. Hippolyte Carnot, Barere was a deserving and an illused mana man who, though

by no means faultless, must yet, when due allowance is made for the force of circumstances and the infirmity

of human nature, be considered as on the whole entitled to our esteem. It will be for the public to determine,

after a full hearing, whether the editors have, by thus connecting their names with that of Barere, raised his

We are not conscious that, when we opened this book, we were under the influence of any feeling likely to

pervert our judgment. Undoubtedly we had long entertained a most unfavourable opinion of Barere: but to

this opinion we were not tied by any passion or by any interest. Our dislike was a reasonable dislike, and

might have been removed by reason. Indeed our expectation was, that these Memoirs would in some measure

clear Barere's fame. That he could vindicate himself from all the charges which had been brought against

him, we knew to be impossible; and his editors admit that he has not done so. But we thought it highly

probable that some grave accusations would be refuted, and that many offences to which he would have been

forced to plead guilty would be greatly extenuated. We were not disposed to be severe. We were fully aware

that temptations such as those to which the members of the Convention and of the Committee of Public

Safety were exposed must try severely the strength of the firmest virtue. Indeed our inclination has always

been to regard with an indulgence, which to some rigid moralists appears excessive, those faults into which

gentle and noble spirits are sometimes hurried by the excitement of conflict, by the maddening influence of

With such feelings we read this book, and compared it with other accounts of the events in which Barere bore

a part. It is now our duty to express the opinion to which this investigation has led us.

Our opinion then is this: that Barere approached nearer than any person mentioned in history or fiction,

whether man or devil, to the idea of consummate and universal depravity. In him the qualities which are the

proper objects of hatred, and the qualities which are the proper objects of contempt, preserve an exquisite and

absolute harmony. In almost every particular sort of wickedness he has had rivals. His sensuality was

immoderate; but this was a failing common to him with many great and amiable men. There have been many

men as cowardly as he, some as cruel, a few as mean, a few as impudent. There may also have been as great

liars, though we never met with them or read of them. But when we put everything together, sensuality,

poltroonery, baseness, effrontery, mendacity, barbarity, the result is something which in a novel we should

condemn as caricature, and to which, we venture to say, no parallel can be found in history.

It would be grossly unjust, we acknowledge, to try a man situated as Barere was by a severe standard. Nor

have we done so. We have formed our opinion of him, by comparing him, not with politicians of stainless

character, not with Chancellor D'Aguesseau, or General Washington, or Mr Wilberforce, or Earl Grey, but

with his own colleagues of the Mountain. That party included a considerable number of the worst men that

ever lived; but we see in it nothing like Barere. Compared with him, Fouche seems honest; Billaud seems

humane; Hebert seems to rise into dignity. Every other chief of a party, says M. Hippolyte Carnot, has found

apologists: one set of men exalts the Girondists; another set justifies Danton; a third deifies Robespierre: but

Barere has remained without a defender. We venture to suggest a very simple solution of this phenomenon.

All the other chiefs of parties had some good qualities; and Barere had none. The genius, courage, patriotism,

and humanity of the Girondist statesmen more than atoned for what was culpable in their conduct, and should

have protected them from the insult of being compared with such a thing as Barere. Danton and Robespierre

were indeed bad men; but in both of them some important parts of the mind remained sound. Danton was

brave and resolute, fond of pleasure, of power, and of distinction, with vehement passions, with lax

principles, but with some kind and manly feelings, capable of great crimes, but capable also of friendship and

of compassion. He, therefore, naturally finds admirers among persons of bold and sanguine dispositions.

Robespierre was a vain, envious, and suspicious man, with a hard heart, weak nerves, and a gloomy temper.

But we cannot with truth deny that he was, in the vulgar sense of the word, disinterested, that his private life

was correct, or that he was sincerely zealous for his own system of politics and morals. He, therefore,

naturally finds admirers among honest but moody and bitter democrats. If no class has taken the reputation of

Barere under its patronage, the reason is plain: Barere had not a single virtue, nor even the semblance of one.

It is true that he was not, as far as we are able to judge, originally of a savage disposition; but this

circumstance seems to us only to aggravate his guilt. There are some unhappy men constitutionally prone to

the darker passions, men all whose blood is gall, and to whom bitter words and harsh actions are as natural as

snarling and biting to a ferocious dog. To come into the world with this wretched mental disease is a greater

calamity than to be born blind or deaf. A man who, having such a temper, keeps it in subjection, and

constrains himself to behave habitually with justice and humanity towards those who are in his power, seems

to us worthy of the highest admiration. There have been instances of this selfcommand; and they are among

the most signal triumphs of philosophy and religion. On the other hand, a man who, having been blessed by

nature with a bland disposition, gradually brings himself to inflict misery on his fellow creatures with

indifference, with satisfaction, and at length with a hideous rapture, deserves to be regarded as a portent of

wickedness; and such a man was Barere. The history of his downward progress is full of instruction.

Weakness, cowardice, and fickleness were born with him; the best quality which he received from nature was

a good temper. These, it is true, are not very promising materials; yet, out of materials as unpromising, high

sentiments of piety and of honour have sometimes made martyrs and heroes. Rigid principles often do for

feeble minds what stays do for feeble bodies. But Barere had no principles at all. His character was equally

destitute of natural and of acquired strength. Neither in the commerce of life, nor in books, did we ever

become acquainted with any mind so unstable, so utterly destitute of tone, so incapable of independent

thought and earnest preference, so ready to take impressions and so ready to lose them. He resembled those

creepers which must lean on something, and which, as soon as their prop is removed, fall down in utter

helplessness. He could no more stand up, erect and selfsupported, in any cause, than the ivy can rear itself

like the oak, or the wild vine shoot to heaven like the cedar of Lebanon. It is barely possible that, under good

guidance and in favourable circumstances, such a man might have slipped through life without discredit. But

the unseaworthy craft, which even in still water would have been in danger of going down from its own

rottenness, was launched on a raging ocean, amidst a storm in which a whole armada of gallant ships was cast

away. The weakest and most servile of human beings found himself on a sudden an actor in a Revolution

which convulsed the whole civilised world. At first he fell under the influence of humane and moderate men,

and talked the language of humanity and moderation. But he soon found himself surrounded by fierce and

resolute spirits, scared by no danger and restrained by no scruple. He had to choose whether he would be their

victim or their accomplice. His choice was soon made. He tasted blood, and felt no loathing; he tasted it

again, and liked it well. Cruelty became with him, first a habit, then a passion, at last a madness. So complete

and rapid was the degeneracy of his nature, that within a very few months after the time when he had passed

for a goodnatured man, he had brought himself to look on the despair and misery of his fellowcreatures

with a glee resembling that of the fiends whom Dante saw watching the pool of seething pitch in Malebolge.

He had many associates in guilt; but he distinguished himself from them all by the Bacchanalian exaltation

which he seemed to feel in the work of death. He was drunk with innocent and noble blood, laughed and

shouted as he butchered, and howled strange songs and reeled in strange dances amidst the carnage. Then

came a sudden and violent turn of fortune. The miserable man was hurled down from the height of power to

hopeless ruin and infamy. The shock sobered him at once. The fumes of his horrible intoxication passed

away. But he was now so irrecoverably depraved that the discipline of adversity only drove him further into

wickedness. Ferocious vices, of which he had never been suspected, had been developed in him by power.

Another class of vices, less hateful perhaps, but more despicable, was now developed in him by poverty and

disgrace. Having appalled the whole world by great crimes perpetrated under the pretence of zeal for liberty,

he became the meanest of all the tools of despotism. It is not easy to settle the order of precedence among his

vices, but we are inclined to think that his baseness was, on the whole, a rarer and more marvellous thing than

This is the view which we have long taken of Barere's character; but, till we read these Memoirs, we held our

opinion with the diffidence which becomes a judge who has only heard one side. The case seemed strong,

and in parts unanswerable; yet we did not know what the accused party might have to say for himself; and,

not being much inclined to take our fellowcreatures either for angels of light or for angels of darkness, we

could not but feel some suspicion that his offences had been exaggerated. That suspicion is now at an end.

The vindication is before us. It occupies four volumes. It was the work of forty years. It would be absurd to

suppose that it does not refute every serious charge which admitted of refutation. How many serious charges,

then, are here refuted? Not a single one. Most of the imputations which have been thrown on Barere he does

not even notice. In such cases, of course, judgment must go against him by default. The fact is, that nothing

can be more meagre and uninteresting than his account of the great public transactions in which he was

engaged. He gives us hardly a word of new information respecting the proceedings of the Committee of

Public Safety; and, by way of compensation, tells us long stories about things which happened before he

emerged from obscurity, and after he had again sunk into it. Nor is this the worst. As soon as he ceases to

write trifles, he begins to write lies; and such lies! A man who has never been within the tropics does not

know what a thunderstorm means; a man who has never looked on Niagara has but a faint idea of a cataract;

and he who has not read Barere's Memoirs may be said not to know what it is to lie. Among the numerous

classes which make up the great genus Mendacium, the Mendacium Vasconicum, or Gascon lie, has, during

some centuries, been highly esteemed as peculiarly circumstantial and peculiarly impudent; and, among the

Mendacia Vasconica, the Mendacium Barerianum is, without doubt, the finest species. It is indeed a superb

variety, and quite throws into the shade some Mendacia which we were used to regard with admiration. The

Mendacium Wraxallianum, for example, though by no means to be despised, will not sustain the comparison

for a moment. Seriously, we think that M. Hippolyte Carnot is much to blame in this matter. We can hardly

suppose him to be worse read than ourselves in the history of the Convention, a history which must interest

him deeply, not only as a Frenchman, but also as a son. He must, therefore, be perfectly aware that many of

the most important statements which these volumes contain are falsehoods, such as Corneille's Dorante, or

Moliere's Scapin, or Colin d'Harleville's Monsieur de Crac would have been ashamed to utter. We are far,

indeed, from holding M. Hippolyte Carnot answerable for Barere's want of veracity; but M. Hippolyte Carnot

has arranged these Memoirs, has introduced them to the world by a laudatory preface, has described them as

documents of great historical value, and has illustrated them by notes. We cannot but think that, by acting

thus, he contracted some obligations of which he does not seem to have been at all aware; and that he ought

not to have suffered any monstrous fiction to go forth under the sanction of his name, without adding a line at

We will content ourselves at present with pointing out two instances of Barere's wilful and deliberate

mendacity; namely, his account of the death of Marie Antoinette, and his account of the death of the

Girondists. His account of the death of Marie Antoinette is as follows:"Robespierre in his turn proposed

that the members of the Capet family should be banished, and that Marie Antoinette should be brought to trial

before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He would have been better employed in concerting military measures

which might have repaired our disasters in Belgium, and might have arrested the progress of the enemies of

Now, it is notorious that Marie Antoinette was sent before the Revolutionary Tribunal, not at Robespierre's

instance, but in direct opposition to Robespierre's wishes. We will cite a single authority, which is quite

decisive. Bonaparte, who had no conceivable motive to disguise the truth, who had the best opportunities of

knowing the truth, and who, after his marriage with the Archduchess, naturally felt an interest in the fate of

his wife's kinswomen, distinctly affirmed that Robespierre opposed the trying of the Queen. (O'Meara's

"Voice from St Helena", ii. 170.) Who, then, was the person who really did propose that the Capet family

should be banished, and that Marie Antoinette should be tried? Full information will be found in the

"Moniteur". ("Moniteur", 2d, 7th and 9th of August, 1793.) From that valuable record it appears that, on the

first of August 1793, an orator, deputed by the Committee of Public Safety, addressed the Convention in a

long and elaborate discourse. He asked, in passionate language, how it happened that the enemies of the

Republic still continued to hope for success. "Is it," he cried, "because we have too long forgotten the crimes

of the Austrian woman? Is it because we have shown so strange an indulgence to the race of our ancient

tyrants? It is time that this unwise apathy should cease; it is time to extirpate from the soil of the Republic the

last roots of royalty. As for the children of Louis the conspirator, they are hostages for the Republic. The

charge of their maintenance shall be reduced to what is necessary for the food and keep of two individuals.

The public treasure shall no longer be lavished on creatures who have too long been considered as privileged.

But behind them lurks a woman who has been the cause of all the disasters of France, and whose share in

every project adverse to the revolution has long been known. National justice claims its rights over her. It is

to the tribunal appointed for the trial of conspirators that she ought to be sent. It is only by striking the

Austrian woman that you can make Francis and George, Charles and William, sensible of the crimes which

their ministers and their armies have committed." The speaker concluded by moving that Marie Antoinette

should be brought to judgment, and should, for that end, be forthwith transferred to the Conciergerie; and that

all the members of the house of Capet, with the exception of those who were under the sword of the law, and

of the two children of Louis, should be banished from the French territory. The motion was carried without

Now, who was the person who made this speech and this motion? It was Barere himself. It is clear, then, that

Barere attributed his own mean insolence and barbarity to one who, whatever his crimes may have been, was

in this matter innocent. The only question remaining is, whether Barere was misled by his memory, or wrote

We are convinced that he wrote a deliberate falsehood. His memory is described by his editors as remarkably

good, and must have been bad indeed if he could not remember such a fact as this. It is true that the number

of murders in which he subsequently bore a part was so great that he might well confound one with another,

that he might well forget what part of the daily hecatomb was consigned to death by himself, and what part

by his colleagues. But two circumstances make it quite incredible that the share which he took in the death of

Marie Antoinette should have escaped his recollection. She was one of his earliest victims. She was one of

his most illustrious victims. The most hardened assassin remembers the first time that he shed blood; and the

widow of Louis was no ordinary sufferer. If the question had been about some milliner, butchered for hiding

in her garret her brother who had let drop a word against the Jacobin Clubif the question had been about

some old nun, dragged to death for having mumbled what were called fanatical words over her

beadsBarere's memory might well have deceived him. It would be as unreasonable to expect him to

remember all the wretches whom he slew as all the pinches of snuff that he took. But, though Barere

murdered many hundreds of human beings, he murdered only one Queen. That he, a small country lawyer,

who, a few years before, would have thought himself honoured by a glance or a word from the daughter of so

many Caesars, should call her the Austrian woman, should send her from jail to jail, should deliver her over

to the executioner, was surely a great event in his life. Whether he had reason to be proud of it or ashamed of

it, is a question on which we may perhaps differ from his editors; but they will admit, we think, that he could

We, therefore, confidently charge Barere with having written a deliberate falsehood; and we have no

hesitation in saying that we never, in the course of any historical researches that we have happened to make,

fell in with a falsehood so audacious, except only the falsehood which we are about to expose.

Of the proceeding against the Girondists, Barere speaks with just severity. He calls it an atrocious injustice

perpetrated against the legislators of the republic. He complains that distinguished deputies, who ought to

have been readmitted to their seats in the Convention, were sent to the scaffold as conspirators. The day, he

exclaims, was a day of mourning for France. It mutilated the national representation; it weakened the sacred

principle, that the delegates of the people were inviolable. He protests that he had no share in the guilt. "I

have had," he says, "the patience to go through the 'Moniteur', extracting all the charges brought against

deputies, and all the decrees for arresting and impeaching deputies. Nowhere will you find my name. I never

brought a charge against any of my colleagues, or made a report against any, or drew up an impeachment

Now, we affirm that this is a lie. We affirm that Barere himself took the lead in the proceedings of the

Convention against the Girondists. We affirm that he, on the twentyeighth of July 1793, proposed a decree

for bringing nine Girondist deputies to trial, and for putting to death sixteen other Girondist deputies without

any trial at all. We affirm that, when the accused deputies had been brought to trial, and when some

apprehension arose that their eloquence might produce an effect even on the Revolutionary Tribunal, Barere

did, on the 8th of Brumaire, second a motion for a decree authorising the tribunal to decide without hearing

out the defence; and, for the truth of every one of these things so affirmed by us, we appeal to the very

"Moniteur" to which Barere has dared to appeal. ("Moniteur", 31st of July 1793, and Nonidi, first Decade of

What M. Hippolyte Carnot, knowing, as he must know, that this book contains such falsehoods as those

which we have exposed, can have meant, when he described it as a valuable addition to our stock of historical

information, passes our comprehension. When a man is not ashamed to tell lies about events which took place

before hundreds of witnesses, and which are recorded in well known and accessible books, what credit can

we give to his account of things done in corners? No historian who does not wish to be laughed at will ever

cite the unsupported authority of Barere as sufficient to prove any fact whatever. The only thing, as far as we

can see, on which these volumes throw any light, is the exceeding baseness of the author.

So much for the veracity of the Memoirs. In a literary point of view, they are beneath criticism. They are as

shallow, flippant, and affected, as Barere's oratory in the Convention. They are also, what his oratory in the

Convention was not, utterly insipid. In fact, they are the mere dregs and rinsings of a bottle of which even the

We will now try to present our readers with a sketch of this man's life. We shall, of course, make very sparing

use indeed of his own Memoirs; and never without distrust, except where they are confirmed by other

Bertrand Barere was born in the year 1755, at Tarbes in Gascony. His father was the proprietor of a small

estate at Vieuzac, in the beautiful vale of Argeles. Bertrand always loved to be called Barere de Vieuzac, and

flattered himself with the hope that, by the help of this feudal addition to his name, he might pass for a

gentleman. He was educated for the bar at Toulouse, the seat of one of the most celebrated parliaments of the

kingdom, practised as an advocate with considerable success, and wrote some small pieces, which he sent to

the principal literary societies in the south of France. Among provincial towns, Toulouse seems to have been

remarkably rich in indifferent versifiers and critics. It gloried especially in one venerable institution, called

the Academy of the Floral Games. This body held every year a grand meeting which was a subject of intense

interest to the whole city, and at which flowers of gold and silver were given as prizes for odes, for idyls, and

for something that was called eloquence. These bounties produced of course the ordinary effect of bounties,

and turned people who might have been thriving attorneys and useful apothecaries into small wits and bad

poets. Barere does not appear to have been so lucky as to obtain any of these precious flowers; but one of his

performances was mentioned with honour. At Montauban he was more fortunate. The academy of that town

bestowed on him several prizes, one for a panegyric on Louis the Twelfth, in which the blessings of

monarchy and the loyalty of the French nation were set forth; and another for a panegyric on poor Franc de

Pompignan, in which, as may easily be supposed, the philosophy of the eighteenth century was sharply

assailed. Then Barere found an old stone inscribed with three Latin words, and wrote a dissertation upon it,

which procured him a seat in a learned Assembly, called the Toulouse Academy of Sciences, Inscriptions,

and Polite Literature. At length the doors of the Academy of the Floral Games were opened to so much merit.

Barere, in his thirtythird year, took his seat as one of that illustrious brotherhood, and made an inaugural

oration which was greatly admired. He apologises for recounting these triumphs of his youthful genius. We

own that we cannot blame him for dwelling long on the least disgraceful portion of his existence. To send in

declamations for prizes offered by provincial academies is indeed no very useful or dignified employment for

a bearded man; but it would have been well if Barere had always been so employed.

In 1785 he married a young lady of considerable fortune. Whether she was in other respects qualified to make

a home happy, is a point respecting which we are imperfectly informed. In a little work, entitled "Melancholy

Pages", which was written in 1797, Barere avers that his marriage was one of mere convenience, that at the

altar his heart was heavy with sorrowful forebodings, that he turned pale as he pronounced the solemn "Yes,"

that unbidden tears rolled down his cheeks, that his mother shared his presentiment, and that the evil omen

was accomplished. "My marriage," he says, "was one of the most unhappy of marriages." So romantic a tale,

told by so noted a liar, did not command our belief. We were, therefore, not much surprised to discover that,

in his Memoirs, he calls his wife a most amiable woman, and declares that, after he had been united to her six

years, he found her as amiable as ever. He complains, indeed, that she was too much attached to royalty and

to the old superstition; but he assures us that his respect for her virtues induced him to tolerate her prejudices.

Now Barere, at the time of his marriage, was himself a Royalist and a Catholic. He had gained one prize by

flattering the Throne, and another by defending the Church. It is hardly possible, therefore, that disputes

about politics or religion should have embittered his domestic life till some time after he became a husband.

Our own guess is, that his wife was, as he says, a virtuous and amiable woman, and that she did her best to

make him happy during some years. It seems clear that, when circumstances developed the latent atrocity of

his character, she could no longer endure him, refused to see him, and sent back his letters unopened. Then it

was, we imagine, that he invented the fable about his distress on his wedding day.

In 1788 Barere paid his first visit to Paris, attended reviews, heard Laharpe at the Lycaeum, and Condorcet at

the Academy of Sciences, stared at the envoys of Tippoo Sahib, saw the Royal Family dine at Versailles, and

kept a journal in which he noted down adventures and speculations. Some parts of this journal are printed in

the first volume of the work before us, and are certainly most characteristic. The worst vices of the writer had

not yet shown themselves; but the weakness which was the parent of those vices appears in every line. His

levity, his inconsistency, his servility, were already what they were to the last. All his opinions, all his

feelings, spin round and round like a weathercock in a whirlwind. Nay, the very impressions which he

receives through his senses are not the same two days together. He sees Louis the Sixteenth, and is so much

blinded by loyalty as to find his Majesty handsome. "I fixed my eyes," he says, "with a lively curiosity on his

fine countenance, which I thought open and noble." The next time that the king appears all is altered. His

Majesty's eyes are without the smallest expression; he has a vulgar laugh which seems like idiocy, an ignoble

figure, an awkward gait, and the look of a big boy ill brought up. It is the same with more important

questions. Barere is for the parliaments on the Monday and against the parliaments on the Tuesday, for

feudality in the morning and against feudality in the afternoon. One day he admires the English constitution;

then he shudders to think that, in the struggles by which that constitution had been obtained, the barbarous

islanders had murdered a king, and gives the preference to the constitution of Bearn. Bearn, he says, has a

sublime constitution, a beautiful constitution. There the nobility and clergy meet in one house, and the

Commons in another. If the houses differ, the King has the casting vote. A few weeks later we find him

raving against the principles of this sublime and beautiful constitution. To admit deputies of the nobility and

clergy into the legislature is, he says, neither more nor less than to admit enemies of the nation into the

In this state of mind, without one settled purpose or opinion, the slave of the last word, royalist, aristocrat,

democrat, according to the prevailing sentiment of the coffeehouse or drawingroom into which he had just

looked, did Barere enter into public life. The StatesGeneral had been summoned. Barere went down to his

own province, was there elected one of the representatives of the Third Estate, and returned to Paris in May

A great crisis, often predicted, had at last arrived. In no country, we conceive, have intellectual freedom and

political servitude existed together so long as in France, during the seventy or eighty years which preceded

the last convocation of the Orders. Ancient abuses and new theories flourished in equal vigour side by side.

The people, having no constitutional means of checking even the most flagitious misgovernment, were

indemnified for oppression by being suffered to luxuriate in anarchical speculation, and to deny or ridicule

every principle on which the institutions of the State reposed. Neither those who attribute the downfall of the

old French institutions to the public grievances, nor those who attribute it to the doctrines of the philosophers,

appear to us to have taken into their view more than one half of the subject. Grievances as heavy have often

been endured without producing a revolution; doctrines as bold have often been propounded without

producing a revolution. The question, whether the French nation was alienated from its old polity by the

follies and vices of the Viziers and Sultanas who pillaged and disgraced it, or by the writings of Voltaire and

Rousseau, seems to us as idle as the question whether it was fire or gunpowder that blew up the mills at

Hounslow. Neither cause would have sufficed alone. Tyranny may last through ages where discussion is

suppressed. Discussion may safely be left free by rulers who act on popular principles. But combine a press

like that of London with a government like that of St Petersburg; and the inevitable effect will be an

explosion that will shake the world. So it was in France. Despotism and License, mingling in unblessed

union, engendered that mighty Revolution in which the lineaments of both parents were strangely blended.

The long gestation was accomplished; and Europe saw, with mixed hope and terror, that agonising travail and

Among the crowd of legislators which at this conjuncture poured from all the provinces of France into Paris,

Barere made no contemptible figure. The opinions which he for the moment professed were popular, yet not

extreme. His character was fair; his personal advantages are said to have been considerable; and, from the

portrait which is prefixed to these Memoirs, and which represents him as he appeared in the Convention, we

would judge that his features must have been strikingly handsome, though we think that we can read in them

cowardice and meanness very legibly written by the hand of God. His conversation was lively and easy; his

manners remarkably good for a country lawyer. Women of rank and wit said that he was the only man who,

on his first arrival from a remote province, had that indescribable air which it was supposed that Paris alone

could give. His eloquence, indeed, was by no means so much admired in the capital as it had been by the

ingenious academicians of Montauban and Toulouse. His style was thought very bad; and very bad, if a

foreigner may venture to judge, it continued to the last. It would, however, be unjust to deny that he had some

talents for speaking and writing. His rhetoric, though deformed by every imaginable fault of taste, from

bombast down to buffoonery, was not wholly without force and vivacity. He had also one quality which, in

active life, often gives fourthrate men an advantage over firstrate men. Whatever he could do, he could do

without effort, at any moment, in any abundance, and on any side of any question. There was, indeed, a

perfect harmony between his moral character and his intellectual character. His temper was that of a slave;

his abilities were exactly those which qualified him to be a useful slave. Of thinking to purpose, he was

utterly incapable; but he had wonderful readiness in arranging and expressing thoughts furnished by others.

In the National Assembly he had no opportunity of displaying the full extent either of his talents or of his

vices. He was indeed eclipsed by much abler men. He went, as was his habit, with the stream, spoke

occasionally with some success, and edited a journal called the "Point du Jour", in which the debates of the

He at first ranked by no means among the violent reformers. He was not friendly to that new division of the

French territory which was among the most important changes introduced by the Revolution, and was

especially unwilling to see his native province dismembered. He was entrusted with the task of framing

Reports on the Woods and Forests. Louis was exceedingly anxious about this matter; for his majesty was a

keen sportsman, and would much rather have gone without the Veto, or the prerogative of making peace and

war, than without his hunting and shooting. Gentlemen of the royal household were sent to Barere, in order to

intercede for the deer and pheasants. Nor was this intercession unsuccessful. The reports were so drawn that

Barere was afterwards accused of having dishonestly sacrificed the interests of the public to the tastes of the

court. To one of these reports he had the inconceivable folly and bad taste to prefix a punning motto from

Virgil, fit only for such essays as he had been in the habit of composing for the Floral Games

This literary foppery was one of the few things in which he was consistent. Royalist or Girondist, Jacobin or

As the monarchical party became weaker and weaker, Barere gradually estranged himself more and more

from it, and drew closer and closer to the republicans. It would seem that, during this transition, he was for a

time closely connected with the family of Orleans. It is certain that he was entrusted with the guardianship of

the celebrated Pamela, afterwards Lady Edward Fitzgerald; and it was asserted that he received during some

At the end of September 1791, the labours of the National Assembly terminated, and those of the first and last

It had been enacted that no member of the National Assembly should sit in the Legislative Assembly; a

preposterous and mischievous regulation, to which the disasters which followed must in part be ascribed. In

England, what would be thought of a Parliament which did not contain one single person who had ever sat in

parliament before? Yet it may safely be affirmed that the number of Englishmen who, never having taken any

share in public affairs, are yet well qualified, by knowledge and observation, to be members of the legislature

is at least a hundred times as great as the number of Frenchmen who were so qualified in 1791. How, indeed,

should it have been otherwise? In England, centuries of representative government have made all educated

people in some measure statesmen. In France the National Assembly had probably been composed of as good

materials as were then to be found. It had undoubtedly removed a vast mass of abuses; some of its members

had read and thought much about theories of government; and others had shown great oratorical talents. But

that kind of skill which is required for the constructing, launching, and steering of a polity was lamentably

wanting; for it is a kind of skill to which practice contributes more than books. Books are indeed useful to the

politician, as they are useful to the navigator and to the surgeon. But the real navigator is formed on the

waves; the real surgeon is formed at bedsides; and the conflicts of free states are the real school of

constitutional statesmen. The National Assembly had, however, now served an apprenticeship of two

laborious and eventful years. It had, indeed, by no means finished its education; but it was no longer, as on

the day when it met, altogether rude to political functions. Its later proceedings contain abundant proof that

the members had profited by their experience. Beyond all doubt there was not in France any equal number of

persons possessing in an equal degree the qualities necessary for the judicious direction of public affairs; and,

just at this moment, these legislators, misled by a childish wish to display their own disinterestedness,

deserted the duties which they had half learned, and which nobody else had learned at all, and left their hall to

a second crowd of novices, who had still to master the first rudiments of political business. When Barere

wrote his Memoirs, the absurdity of this selfdenying ordinance had been proved by events, and was, we

believe, acknowledged by all parties. He accordingly, with his usual mendacity, speaks of it in terms

implying that he had opposed it. There was, he tells us, no good citizen who did not regret this fatal vote.

Nay, all wise men, he says, wished the National Assembly to continue its sittings as the first Legislative

Assembly. But no attention was paid to the wishes of the enlightened friends of liberty; and the generous but

fatal suicide was perpetrated. Now the fact is, that Barere, far from opposing this illadvised measure, was

one of those who most eagerly supported it; that he described it from the tribune as wise and magnanimous;

that he assigned, as his reasons for taking this view, some of those phrases in which orators of his class

delight, and which, on all men who have the smallest insight into politics, produce an effect very similar to

that of ipecacuanha. "Those," he said, "who have framed a constitution for their country are, so to speak, out

of the pale of that social state of which they are the authors; for creative power is not in the same sphere with

M. Hippolyte Carnot has noticed this untruth, and attributes it to mere forgetfulness. We leave it to him to

reconcile his very charitable supposition with what he elsewhere says of the remarkable excellence of

Many members of the National Assembly were indemnified for the sacrifice of legislative power by

appointments in various departments of the public service. Of these fortunate persons Barere was one. A high

Court of Appeal had just been instituted. This court was to sit at Paris: but its jurisdiction was to extend over

the whole realm; and the departments were to choose the judges. Barere was nominated by the department of

the Upper Pyrenees, and took his seat in the Palace of Justice. He asserts, and our readers may, if they choose,

believe, that it was about this time in contemplation to make him Minister of the Interior, and that in order to

avoid so grave a responsibility, he obtained permission to pay a visit to his native place. It is certain that he

left Paris early in the year 1792, and passed some months in the south of France.

In the mean time, it became clear that the constitution of 1791 would not work. It was, indeed, not to be

expected that a constitution new both in its principles and its details would at first work easily. Had the chief

magistrate enjoyed the entire confidence of the people, had he performed his part with the utmost zeal,

fidelity, and abilityhad the representative body included all the wisest statesmen of France, the difficulties

might still have been found insuperable. But, in fact, the experiment was made under every disadvantage. The

King, very naturally, hated the constitution. In the Legislative Assembly were men of genius and men of

good intentions, but not a single man of experience. Nevertheless, if France had been suffered to settle her

own affairs without foreign interference, it is possible that the calamities which followed might have been

averted. The King, who, with many good qualities, was sluggish and sensual, might have found compensation

for his lost prerogatives in his immense civil list, in his palaces and hunting grounds, in soups, Perigord pies,

and champagne. The people, finding themselves secure in the enjoyment of the valuable reforms which the

National Assembly had, in the midst of all its errors, effected, would not have been easily excited by

demagogues to acts of atrocity; or, if acts of atrocity had been committed, those acts would probably have

produced a speedy and violent reaction. Had tolerable quiet been preserved during a few years, the

constitution of 1791 might perhaps have taken root, might have gradually acquired the strength which time

alone can give, and might, with some modifications which were undoubtedly needed, have lasted down to the

present time. The European coalition against the Revolution extinguished all hope of such a result. The

deposition of Louis was, in our opinion, the necessary consequence of that coalition. The question was now

no longer, whether the King should have an absolute Veto or a suspensive Veto, whether there should be one

chamber or two chambers, whether the members of the representative body should be reeligible or not; but

whether France should belong to the French. The independence of the nation, the integrity of the territory,

were at stake; and we must say plainly that we cordially approve of the conduct of those Frenchmen who, at

that conjuncture, resolved, like our own Blake, to play the men for their country, under whatever form of

It seems to us clear that the war with the Continental coalition was, on the side of France, at first a defensive

war, and therefore a just war. It was not a war for small objects, or against despicable enemies. On the event

were staked all the dearest interests of the French people. Foremost among the threatening powers appeared

two great and martial monarchies, either of which, situated as France then was, might be regarded as a

formidable assailant. It is evident that, under such circumstances, the French could not, without extreme

imprudence, entrust the supreme administration of their affairs to any person whose attachment to the

national cause admitted of doubt. Now, it is no reproach to the memory of Louis to say that he was not

attached to the national cause. Had he been so, he would have been something more than man. He had held

absolute power, not by usurpation, but by the accident of birth, and by the ancient polity of the kingdom. That

power he had, on the whole, used with lenity. He had meant well by his people. He had been willing to make

to them, of his own mere motion, concessions such as scarcely any other sovereign has ever made except

under duress. He had paid the penalty of faults not his own, of the haughtiness and ambition of some of his

predecessors, of the dissoluteness and baseness of others. He had been vanquished, taken captive, led in

triumph, put in ward. He had escaped; he had been caught; he had been dragged back like a runaway galley

slave to the oar. He was still a state prisoner. His quiet was broken by daily affronts and lampoons.

Accustomed from the cradle to be treated with profound reverence, he was now forced to command his

feelings, while men who, a few months before, had been hackney writers or country attorneys, sat in his

presence with covered heads, and addressed him in the easy tone of equality. Conscious of fair intentions,

sensible of hard usage, he doubtless detested the Revolution; and, while charged with the conduct of the war

against the confederates, pined in secret for the sight of the German eagles and the sound of the German

drums. We do not blame him for this. But can we blame those who, being resolved to defend the work of the

National Assembly against the interference of strangers, were not disposed to have him at their head in the

fearful struggle which was approaching? We have nothing to say in defence or extenuation of the insolence,

injustice, and cruelty with which, after the victory of the republicans, he and his family were treated. But this

we say, that the French had only one alternative, to deprive him of the powers of first magistrate, or to ground

their arms and submit patiently to foreign dictation. The events of the tenth of August sprang inevitably from

the league of Pilnitz. The King's palace was stormed; his guards were slaughtered. He was suspended from

his regal functions; and the Legislative Assembly invited the nation to elect an extraordinary Convention,

with the full powers which the conjuncture required. To this Convention the members of the National

The Convention met on the 21st of September 1792. The first proceedings were unanimous. Royalty was

abolished by acclamation. No objections were made to this great change; and no reasons were assigned for it.

For certainly we cannot honour with the name of reasons such apophthegms, as that kings are in the moral

world what monsters are in the physical world; and that the history of kings is the martyrology of nations.

But, though the discussion was worthy only of a debating club of schoolboys, the resolution to which the

Convention came seems to have been that which sound policy dictated. In saying this, we do not mean to

express an opinion that a republic is, either in the abstract the best form of government, or is, under ordinary

circumstances, the form of government best suited to the French people. Our own opinion is, that the best

governments which have ever existed in the world have been limited monarchies; and that France, in

particular, has never enjoyed so much prosperity and freedom as under a limited monarchy. Nevertheless, we

approve of the vote of the Convention which abolished kingly government. The interference of foreign

powers had brought on a crisis which made extraordinary measures necessary. Hereditary monarchy may be,

and we believe that it is, a very useful institution in a country like France. And masts are very useful parts of

a ship. But, if the ship is on her beamends, it may be necessary to cut the masts away. When once she has

righted, she may come safe into port under jury rigging, and there be completely repaired. But, in the

meantime, she must be hacked with unsparing hand, lest that which, under ordinary circumstances, is an

essential part of her fabric should, in her extreme distress, sink her to the bottom. Even so there are political

emergencies in which it is necessary that governments should be mutilated of their fair proportions for a time,

lest they be cast away forever; and with such an emergency the Convention had to deal. The first object of a

good Frenchman should have been to save France from the fate of Poland. The first requisite of a government

was entire devotion to the national cause. That requisite was wanting in Louis; and such a want, at such a

moment, could not be supplied by any public or private virtues. If the king were set aside, the abolition of

kingship necessarily followed. In the state in which the public mind then was, it would have been idle to

think of doing what our ancestors did in 1688, and what the French Chamber of Deputies did in 1830. Such

an attempt would have failed amidst universal derision and execration. It would have disgusted all zealous

men of all opinions; and there were then few men who were not zealous. Parties fatigued by long conflict,

and instructed by the severe discipline of that school in which alone mankind will learn, are disposed to listen

to the voice of a mediator. But when they are in their first heady youth, devoid of experience, fresh for

exertion, flushed with hope, burning with animosity, they agree only in spurning out of their way the

daysman who strives to take his stand between them and to lay his hand upon them both. Such was in 1792

the state of France. On one side was the great name of the heir of Hugh Capet, the thirtythird king of the

third race; on the other side was the great name of the republic. There was no rallying point save these two. It

was necessary to make a choice; and those, in our opinion, judged well who, waving for the moment all

subordinate questions, preferred independence to subjugation, and the natal soil to the emigrant camp.

As to the abolition of royalty, and as to the vigorous prosecution of the war, the whole Convention seemed to

be united as one man. But a deep and broad gulf separated the representative body into two great parties.

On one side were those statesmen who are called, from the name of the department which some of them

represented, the Girondists, and, from the name of one of their most conspicuous leaders, the Brissotines. In

activity and practical ability, Brissot and Gensonne were the most conspicuous among them. In parliamentary

eloquence, no Frenchman of that time can be considered as equal to Vergniaud. In a foreign country, and

after the lapse of half a century, some parts of his speeches are still read with mournful admiration. No man,

we are inclined to believe, ever rose so rapidly to such a height of oratorical excellence. His whole public life

lasted barely two years. This is a circumstance which distinguishes him from our own greatest speakers, Fox,

Burke, Pitt, Sheridan, Windham, Canning. Which of these celebrated men would now be remembered as an

orator, if he had died two years after he first took his seat in the House of Commons? Condorcet brought to

the Girondist party a different kind of strength. The public regarded him with justice as an eminent

mathematician, and, with less reason, as a great master of ethical and political science; the philosophers

considered him as their chief, as the rightful heir, by intellectual descent and by solemn adoption, of their

deceased sovereign D'Alembert. In the same ranks were found Guadet, Isnard, Barbaroux, Buzot, Louvet, too

well known as the author of a very ingenious and very licentious romance, and more honourably

distinguished by the generosity with which he pleaded for the unfortunate, and by the intrepidity with which

he defied the wicked and powerful. Two persons whose talents were not brilliant, but who enjoyed a high

reputation for probity and public spirit, Petion and Roland, lent the whole weight of their names to the

Girondist connection. The wife of Roland brought to the deliberations of her husband's friends masculine

courage and force of thought, tempered by womanly grace and vivacity. Nor was the splendour of a great

military reputation wanting to this celebrated party. Dumourier, then victorious over the foreign invaders, and

at the height of popular favour, must be reckoned among the allies of the Gironde.

The errors of the Brissotines were undoubtedly neither few nor small; but, when we fairly compare their

conduct with the conduct of any other party which acted or suffered during the French Revolution, we are

forced to admit their superiority in every quality except that single quality which in such times prevails over

every other, decision. They were zealous for the great social reform which had been effected by the National

Assembly; and they were right. For, though that reform was, in some respects, carried too far, it was a

blessing well worth even the fearful price which has been paid for it. They were resolved to maintain the

independence of their country against foreign invaders; and they were right. For the heaviest of all yokes is

the yoke of the stranger. They thought that, if Louis remained at their head, they could not carry on with the

requisite energy the conflict against the European coalition. They therefore concurred in establishing a

republican government; and here, again, they were right. For, in that struggle for life and death, it would have

Thus far they went along with the revolutionary movement. At this point they stopped; and, in our judgment,

they were right in stopping, as they had been right in moving. For great ends, and under extraordinary

circumstances, they had concurred in measures which, together with much good, had necessarily produced

much evil; which had unsettled the public mind; which had taken away from government the sanction of

prescription; which had loosened the very foundations of property and law. They thought that it was now

their duty to prop what it had recently been their duty to batter. They loved liberty, but liberty associated with

order, with justice, with mercy, and with civilisation. They were republicans; but they were desirous to adorn

their republic with all that had given grace and dignity to the fallen monarchy. They hoped that the humanity,

the courtesy, the taste, which had done much in old times to mitigate the slavery of France, would now lend

additional charms to her freedom. They saw with horror crimes exceeding in atrocity those which had

disgraced the infuriated religious factions of the sixteenth century, perpetrated in the name of reason and

philanthropy. They demanded, with eloquent vehemence, that the authors of the lawless massacre, which, just

before the meeting of the Convention, had been committed in the prisons of Paris, should be brought to

condign punishment. They treated with just contempt the pleas which have been set up for that great crime.

They admitted that the public danger was pressing; but they denied that it justified a violation of those

principles of morality on which all society rests. The independence and honour of France were indeed to be

Opposed to the Girondists was a party which, having been long execrated throughout the civilised world, has

of latesuch is the ebb and flow of opinionfound not only apologists, but even eulogists. We are not

disposed to deny that some members of the Mountain were sincere and public spirited men. But even the best

of them, Carnot, for example, and Cambon, were far too unscrupulous as to the means which they employed

for the purpose of attaining great ends. In the train of these enthusiasts followed a crowd, composed of all

who, from sensual, sordid, or malignant motives, wished for a period of boundless license.

When the Convention met, the majority were with the Girondists, and Barere was with the majority. On the

King's trial, indeed, he quitted the party with which he ordinarily acted, voted with the Mountain, and spoke

against the prisoner with a violence such as few members even of the Mountain showed.

The conduct of the leading Girondists on that occasion was little to their honour. Of cruelty, indeed, we fully

acquit them; but it is impossible to acquit them of criminal irresolution and disingenuousness. They were far,

indeed, from thirsting for the blood of Louis: on the contrary, they were most desirous to protect him. But

they were afraid that, if they went straight forward to their object, the sincerity of their attachment to

republican institutions would be suspected. They wished to save the King's life, and yet to obtain all the credit

of having been regicides. Accordingly, they traced out for themselves a crooked course, by which they hoped

to attain both their objects. They first voted the King guilty. They then voted for referring the question

respecting his fate to the whole body of the people. Defeated in this attempt to rescue him, they reluctantly,

and with illsuppressed shame and concern, voted for the capital sentence. Then they made a last attempt in

his favour, and voted for respiting the execution. These zigzag politics produced the effect which any man

conversant with public affairs might have foreseen. The Girondists, instead of attaining both their ends, failed

of both. The Mountain justly charged them with having attempted to save the King by underhand means.

Their own consciences told them, with equal justice, that their hands had been dipped in the blood of the

most inoffensive and most unfortunate of men. The direct path was here, as usual, the path not only of

honour, but of safety. The principle on which the Girondists stood as a party was, that the season for

revolutionary violence was over, and that the reign of law and order ought now to commence. But the

proceeding against the King was clearly revolutionary in its nature. It was not in conformity with the laws.

The only plea for it was, that all ordinary rules of jurisprudence and morality were suspended by the extreme

public danger. This was the very plea which the Mountain urged in defence of the massacre of September,

and to which, when so urged, the Girondists refused to listen. They therefore, by voting for the death of the

King, conceded to the Mountain the chief point at issue between the two parties. Had they given a manful

vote against the capital sentence, the regicides would have been in a minority. It is probable that there would

have been an immediate appeal to force. The Girondists might have been victorious. In the worst event, they

would have fallen with unblemished honour. Thus much is certain, that their boldness and honesty could not

possibly have produced a worse effect than was actually produced by their timidity and their stratagems.

Barere, as we have said, sided with the Mountain on this occasion. He voted against the appeal to the people

and against the respite. His demeanour and his language also were widely different from those of the

Girondists. Their hearts were heavy, and their deportment was that of men oppressed by sorrow. It was

Vergniaud's duty to proclaim the result of the rollcall. His face was pale, and he trembled with emotion, as

in a low and broken voice he announced that Louis was condemned to death. Barere had not, it is true, yet

attained to full perfection in the art of mingling jests and conceits with words of death; but he already gave

promise of his future excellence in this high department of Jacobin oratory. He concluded his speech with a

sentence worthy of his head and heart. "The tree of liberty," he said, "as an ancient author remarks, flourishes

when it is watered with the blood of all classes of tyrants." M. Hippolyte Carnot has quoted this passage in

order, as we suppose, to do honour to his hero. We wish that a note had been added to inform us from what

ancient author Barere quoted. In the course of our own small reading among the Greek and Latin writers, we

have not happened to fall in with trees of liberty and wateringpots full of blood; nor can we, such is our

ignorance of classical antiquity, even imagine an Attic or Roman orator employing imagery of that sort. In

plain words, when Barere talked about an ancient author, he was lying, as he generally was when he asserted

any fact, great or small. Why he lied on this occasion we cannot guess, unless indeed it was to keep his hand

It is not improbable that, but for the one circumstance, Barere would, like most of those with whom he

ordinarily acted, have voted for the appeal to the people and for the respite. But, just before the

commencement of the trial, papers had been discovered which proved that, while a member of the National

Assembly, he had been in communication with the Court respecting his Reports on the Woods and Forests.

He was acquitted of all criminality by the Convention; but the fiercer Republicans considered him as a tool of

the fallen monarch; and this reproach was long repeated in the journal of Marat, and in the speeches at the

Jacobin club. It was natural that a man like Barere should, under such circumstances, try to distinguish

himself among the crowd of regicides by peculiar ferocity. It was because he had been a royalist that he was

The King was no more. The leading Girondists had, by their conduct towards him, lowered their character in

the eyes both of friends and foes. They still, however, maintained the contest against the Mountain, called for

vengeance on the assassins of September, and protested against the anarchical and sanguinary doctrines of

Marat. For a time they seemed likely to prevail. As publicists and orators, they had no rivals in the

Convention. They had with them, beyond all doubt, the great majority both of the deputies and of the French

nation. These advantages, it should seem, ought to have decided the event of the struggle. But the opposite

party had compensating advantages of a different kind. The chiefs of the Mountain, though not eminently

distinguished by eloquence or knowledge, had great audacity, activity, and determination. The Convention

and France were against them; but the mob of Paris, the clubs of Paris, and the municipal government of

The policy of the Jacobins, in this situation, was to subject France to an aristocracy infinitely worse than that

aristocracy which had emigrated with the count of Artoisto an aristocracy not of birth, not of wealth, not of

education, but of mere locality. They would not hear of privileged orders; but they wished to have a

privileged city. That twentyfive millions of Frenchmen should be ruled by a hundred thousand gentlemen

and clergymen was insufferable; but that twentyfive millions of Frenchmen should be ruled by a hundred

thousand Parisians was as it should be. The qualification of a member of the new oligarchy was simply that

he should live near the hall where the Convention met, and should be able to squeeze himself daily into the

gallery during a debate, and now and then to attend with a pike for the purpose of blockading the doors. It

was quite agreeable to the maxims of the Mountain that a score of draymen from Santerre's brewery, or of

devils from Hebert's printinghouse, should be permitted to drown the voices of men commissioned to speak

the sense of such cities as Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Lyons; and that a rabble of halfnaked porters from the

Faubourg St Antoine should have power to annul decrees for which the representatives of fifty or sixty

departments had voted. It was necessary to find some pretext for so odious and absurd a tyranny. Such a

pretext was found. To the old phrases of liberty and equality were added the sonorous watchwords, unity and

indivisability. A new crime was invented, and called by the name of federalism. The object of the Girondists,

it was asserted, was to break up the great nation into little independent commonwealths, bound together only

by a league like that which connects the Swiss Cantons or the United States of America. The great obstacle in

the way of this pernicious design was the influence of Paris. To strengthen the influence of Paris ought

The accusation brought against the leaders of the Girondist party was a mere calumny. They were

undoubtedly desirous to prevent the capital from domineering over the republic, and would gladly have seen

the Convention removed for a time to some provincial town, or placed under the protection of a trusty guard,

which might have overawed the Parisian mob; but there is not the slightest reason to suspect them of any

design against the unity of the state. Barere, however, really was a federalist, and, we are inclined to believe,

the only federalist in the Convention. As far as a man so unstable and servile can be said to have felt any

preference for any form of government, he felt a preference for federal government. He was born under the

Pyrenees; he was a Gascon of the Gascons, one of a people strongly distinguished by intellectual and moral

character, by manners, by modes of speech, by accent, and by physiognomy, from the French of the Seine

and of the Loire; and he had many of the peculiarities of the race to which he belonged. When he first left his

own province he had attained his thirtyfourth year, and had acquired a high local reputation for eloquence

and literature. He had then visited Paris for the first time. He had found himself in a new world. His feelings

were those of a banished man. It is clear also that he had been by no means without his share of the small

disappointments and humiliations so often experienced by men of letters who, elated by provincial applause,

venture to display their powers before the fastidious critics of a capital. On the other hand, whenever he

revisited the mountains among which he had been born, he found himself an object of general admiration. His

dislike of Paris, and his partiality to his native district, were therefore as strong and durable as any sentiments

of a mind like his could be. He long continued to maintain that the ascendency of one great city was the bane

of France; that the superiority of taste and intelligence which it was the fashion to ascribe to the inhabitants of

that city were wholly imaginary; and that the nation would never enjoy a really good government till the

Alsatian people, the Breton people, the people of Bearn, the people of Provence, should have each an

independent existence, and laws suited to its own tastes and habits. These communities he proposed to unite

by a tie similar to that which binds together the grave Puritans of Connecticut and the dissolute slavedrivers

of New Orleans. To Paris he was unwilling to grant even the rank which Washington holds in the United

States. He thought it desirable that the congress of the French federation should have no fixed place of

meeting, but should sit sometimes at Rouen, sometimes at Bordeaux, sometimes at his own Toulouse.

Animated by such feelings, he was, till the close of May 1793, a Girondist, if not an ultraGirondist. He

exclaimed against those impure and bloodthirsty men who wished to make the public danger a pretext for

cruelty and rapine. "Peril," he said, "could be no excuse for crime. It is when the wind blows hard, and the

waves run high, that the anchor is most needed; it is when a revolution is raging, that the great laws of

morality are most necessary to the safety of a state." Of Marat he spoke with abhorrence and contempt; of the

municipal authorities of Paris with just severity. He loudly complained that there were Frenchmen who paid

to the Mountain that homage which was due to the Convention alone. When the establishment of the

Revolutionary Tribunal was first proposed, he joined himself to Vergniaud and Buzot, who strongly objected

to that odious measure. "It cannot be," exclaimed Barere, "that men really attached to liberty will imitate the

most frightful excesses of despotism!" He proved to the Convention, after his fashion, out of Sallust, that

such arbitrary courts may indeed, for a time, be severe only on real criminals, but must inevitably degenerate

into instruments of private cupidity and revenge. When, on the tenth of March, the worst part of the

population of Paris made the first unsuccessful attempt to destroy the Girondists, Barere eagerly called for

vigorous measures of repression and punishment. On the second of April, another attempt of the Jacobins of

Paris to usurp supreme dominion over the republic was brought to the knowledge of the Convention; and

again Barere spoke with warmth against the new tyranny which afflicted France, and declared that the people

of the departments would never crouch beneath the tyranny of one ambitious city. He even proposed a

resolution to the effect that the Convention would exert against the demagogues of the capital the same

energy which had been exerted against the tyrant Louis. We are assured that, in private as in public, he at this

His apparent zeal for the cause of humanity and order had its reward. Early in April came the tidings of

Dumourier's defection. This was a heavy blow to the Girondists. Dumourier was their general. His victories

had thrown a lustre on the whole party; his army, it had been hoped, would, in the worst event, protect the

deputies of the nation against the ragged pikemen of the garrets of Paris. He was now a deserter and an exile;

and those who had lately placed their chief reliance on his support were compelled to join with their deadliest

enemies in execrating his treason. At this perilous conjuncture, it was resolved to appoint a Committee of

Public Safety, and to arm that committee with powers, small indeed when compared with those which it

afterwards drew to itself, but still great and formidable. The moderate party, regarding Barere as a

representative of their feelings and opinions, elected him a member. In his new situation he soon began to

make himself useful. He brought to the deliberations of the Committee, not indeed the knowledge or the

ability of a great statesman, but a tongue and a pen which, if others would only supply ideas, never paused for

want of words. His mind was a mere organ of communication between other minds. It originated nothing; it

retained nothing; but it transmitted everything. The post assigned to him by his colleagues was not really of

the highest importance; but it was prominent, and drew the attention of all Europe. When a great measure was

to be brought forward, when an account was to be rendered of an important event, he was generally the

mouthpiece of the administration. He was therefore not unnaturally considered, by persons who lived at a

distance from the seat of government, and above all by foreigners, who, while the war raged, knew France

only from journals, as the head of that administration of which, in truth, he was only the secretary and the

spokesman. The author of the History of Europe, in our own Annual Registers, appears to have been

The conflict between the hostile parties was meanwhile fast approaching to a crisis. The temper of Paris grew

daily fiercer and fiercer. Delegates appointed by thirtyfive of the forty eight wards of the city appeared at

the bar of the Convention, and demanded that Vergniaud, Brissot, Guadet, Gensonne, Barbaroux, Buzot,

Petion, Louvet, and many other deputies, should be expelled. This demand was disapproved by at least three

fourths of the Assembly, and, when known in the departments, called forth a general cry of indignation.

Bordeaux declared that it would stand by its representatives, and would, if necessary, defend them by the

sword against the tyranny of Paris. Lyons and Marseilles were animated by a similar spirit. These

manifestations of public opinion gave courage to the majority of the Convention. Thanks were voted to the

people of Bordeaux for their patriotic declaration; and a commission consisting of twelve members was

appointed for the purpose of investigating the conduct of the municipal authorities of Paris, and was

empowered to place under arrest such persons as should appear to have been concerned in any plot against

the authority of the Convention. This measure was adopted on the motion of Barere.

A few days of stormy excitement and profound anxiety followed; and then came the crash. On the thirtyfirst

of May the mob of Paris rose; the palace of the Tuileries was besieged by a vast array of pikes; the majority

of the deputies, after vain struggles and remonstrances, yielded to violence, and suffered the Mountain to

carry a decree for the suspension and arrest of the deputies whom the wards of the capital had accused.

During this contest, Barere had been tossed backwards and forwards between the two raging factions. His

feelings, languid and unsteady as they always were, drew him to the Girondists; but he was awed by the

vigour and determination of the Mountain. At one moment he held high and firm language, complained that

the Convention was not free, and protested against the validity of any vote passed under coercion. At another

moment he proposed to conciliate the Parisians by abolishing that commission of twelve which he had

himself proposed only a few days before; and himself drew up a paper condemning the very measures which

had been adopted at his own instance, and eulogising the public spirit of the insurgents. To do him justice, it

was not without some symptoms of shame that he read his document from the tribune, where he had so often

expressed very different sentiments. It is said that, at some passages, he was even seen to blush. It may have

Some days later he proposed that hostages for the personal safety of the accused deputies should be sent to

the departments, and offered to be himself one of those hostages. Nor do we in the least doubt that the offer

was sincere. He would, we firmly believe, have thought himself far safer at Bordeaux or Marseilles than at

Paris. His proposition, however, was not carried into effect; and he remained in the power of the victorious

This was the great crisis of his life. Hitherto he had done nothing inexpiable, nothing which marked him out

as a much worse man than most of his colleagues in the Convention. His voice had generally been on the side

of moderate measures. Had he bravely cast in his lot with the Girondists, and suffered with them, he would,

like them, have had a not dishonourable place in history. Had he, like the great body of deputies who meant

well, but who had not the courage to expose themselves to martyrdom, crouched quietly under the dominion

of the triumphant minority, and suffered every motion of Robespierre and Billaud to pass unopposed, he

would have incurred no peculiar ignominy. But it is probable that this course was not open to him. He had

been too prominent among the adversaries of the Mountain to be admitted to quarter without making some

atonement. It was necessary that, if he hoped to find pardon from his new lords, he should not be merely a

silent and passive slave. What passed in private between him and them cannot be accurately related; but the

result was soon apparent. The Committee of Public Safety was renewed. Several of the fiercest of the

dominant faction, Couthon for example, and Saint Just, were substituted for more moderate politicians; but

The indulgence with which he was treated excited the murmurs of some stern and ardent zealots. Marat, in

the very last words that he wrote, words not published till the dagger of Charlotte Corday had avenged France

and mankind, complained that a man who had no principles, who was always on the side of the strongest,

who had been a royalist, and who was ready, in case of a turn of fortune, to be a royalist again, should be

entrusted with an important share in the administration. (See the "Publiciste" of the 14th July, 1793. Marat

was stabbed on the evening of the 13th.) But the chiefs of the Mountain judged more correctly. They knew,

indeed, as well as Marat, that Barere was a man utterly without faith or steadiness; that, if he could be said to

have any political leaning, his leaning was not towards them; that he felt for the Girondist party that faint and

wavering sort of preference of which alone his nature was susceptible; and that, if he had been at liberty to

make his choice, he would rather have murdered Robespierre and Danton than Vergniaud and Gensonne. But

they justly appreciated that levity which made him incapable alike of earnest love and of earnest hatred, and

that meanness which made it necessary to him to have a master. In truth, what the planters of Carolina and

Louisiana say of black men with flat noses and woolly hair was strictly true of Barere. The curse of Canaan

was upon him. He was born a slave. Baseness was an instinct in him. The impulse which drove him from a

party in adversity to a party in prosperity was as irresistible as that which drives the cuckoo and the swallow

towards the sun when the dark and cold months are approaching. The law which doomed him to be the

humble attendant of stronger spirits resembled the law which binds the pilot fish to the shark. "Ken ye," said

a shrewd Scotch lord, who was asked his opinion of James the First"Ken ye a John Ape? If I have Jacko

by the collar, I can make him bite you; but, if you have Jacko, you can make him bite me." Just such a

creature was Barere. In the hands of the Girondists he would have been eager to proscribe the Jacobins; he

was just as ready, in the gripe of the Jacobins, to proscribe the Girondists. On the fidelity of such a man the

heads of the Mountain could not, of course, reckon; but they valued their conquest as the very easy and not

very delicate lover in Congreve's lively song valued the conquest of a prostitute of a different kind. Barere

was, like Chloe, false and common; but he was, like Chloe, constant while possessed; and they asked no

more. They needed a service which he was perfectly competent to perform. Destitute as he was of all the

talents both of an active and of a speculative statesman, he could with great facility draw up a report, or make

a speech on any subject and on any side. If other people would furnish facts and thoughts, he could always

furnish phrases; and this talent was absolutely at the command of his owners for the time being. Nor had he

excited any angry passion among those to whom he had hitherto been opposed. They felt no more hatred to

him than they felt to the horses which dragged the cannon of the Duke of Brunswick and of the Prince of

SaxeCoburg. The horses had only done according to their kind, and would, if they fell into the hands of the

French, drag with equal vigour and equal docility the guns of the republic, and therefore ought not merely to

be spared, but to be well fed and curried. So was it with Barere. He was of a nature so low, that it might be

doubted whether he could properly be an object of the hostility of reasonable beings. He had not been an

enemy; he was not now a friend. But he had been an annoyance; and he would now be a help.

But, though the heads of the Mountain pardoned this man, and admitted him into partnership with

themselves, it was not without exacting pledges such as made it impossible for him, false and fickle as he

was, ever again to find admission into the ranks which he had deserted. That was truly a terrible sacrament by

which they admitted the apostate into their communion. They demanded of him that he should himself take

the most prominent part in murdering his old friends. To refuse was as much as his life was worth. But what

is life worth when it is only one long agony of remorse and shame? These, however, are feelings of which it

is idle to talk, when we are considering the conduct of such a man as Barere. He undertook the task, mounted

the tribune, and told the Convention that the time was come for taking the stern attitude of justice, and for

striking at all conspirators without distinction. He then moved that Buzot, Barbaroux, Petion, and thirteen

other deputies, should be placed out of the pale of the law, or, in other words, beheaded without a trial; and

that Vergniaud, Guadet, Gensonne, and six others, should be impeached. The motion was carried without

We have already seen with what effrontery Barere has denied, in these Memoirs, that he took any part against

the Girondists. This denial, we think, was the only thing wanting to make his infamy complete. The most

Barere, however, had not yet earned his pardon. The Jacobin party contained one gang which, even in that

party, was pre eminent in every mean and every savage vice; a gang so lowminded and so inhuman that,

compared with them, Robespierre might be called magnanimous and merciful. Of these wretches Hebert was

perhaps the best representative. His favourite amusement was to torment and insult the miserable remains of

that great family which, having ruled France during eight hundred years, had now become an object of pity to

the humblest artisan or peasant. The influence of this man, and of men like him, induced the Committee of

Public Safety to determine that Marie Antoinette should be sent to the scaffold. Barere was again summoned

to his duty. Only four days after he had proposed the decrees against the Girondist deputies he again mounted

the tribune, in order to move that the Queen should be brought before the Revolutionary Tribunal. He was

improving fast in the society of his new allies. When he asked for the heads of Vergniaud and Petion he had

spoken like a man who had some slight sense of his own guilt and degradation: he had said little; and that

little had not been violent. The office of expatiating on the guilt of his old friends he had left to Saint Just.

Very different was Barere's second appearance in the character of an accuser. He now cried out for blood in

the eager tones of the true and burning thirst, and raved against the Austrian woman with the virulence

natural to a coward who finds himself at liberty to outrage that which he has feared and envied. We have

already exposed the shameless mendacity with which, in these Memoirs, he attempts to throw the blame of

On the day on which the fallen Queen was dragged, already more than half dead, to her doom, Barere regaled

Robespierre and some other Jacobins at a tavern. Robespierre's acceptance of the invitation caused some

surprise to those who knew how long and how bitterly it was his nature to hate. "Robespierre of the party!"

muttered Saint Just. "Barere is the only man whom Robespierre has forgiven." We have an account of this

singular repast from one of the guests. Robespierre condemned the senseless brutality with which Hebert had

conducted the proceedings against the Austrian woman, and, in talking on that subject, became so much

excited that he broke his plate in the violence of his gesticulation. Barere exclaimed that the guillotine had cut

a diplomatic knot which it might have been difficult to untie. In the intervals between the Beaune and the

Champagne, between the ragout of thrushes and the partridge with truffles, he fervently preached his new

political creed. "The vessel of the revolution," he said, "can float into port only on waves of blood. We must

begin with the members of the National Assembly and of the Legislative Assembly. That rubbish must be

As he talked at table he talked in the Convention. His peculiar style of oratory was now formed. It was not

altogether without ingenuity and liveliness. But in any other age or country it would have been thought unfit

for the deliberations of a grave assembly, and still more unfit for state papers. It might, perhaps, succeed at a

meeting of a Protestant Association in Exeter Hall, at a Repeal dinner in Ireland, after men had well drunk, or

in an American oration on the fourth of July. No legislative body would now endure it. But in France, during

the reign of the Convention, the old laws of composition were held in as much contempt as the old

government or the old creed. Correct and noble diction belonged, like the etiquette of Versailles and the

solemnities of Notre Dame, to an age which had passed away. Just as a swarm of ephemeral constitutions,

democratic, directorial, and consular, sprang from the decay of the ancient monarchy; just as a swarm of new

superstitions, the worship of the Goddess of Reason, and the fooleries of the Theo philanthropists, sprang

from the decay of the ancient Church; even so, out of the decay of the ancient French eloquence sprang new

fashions of eloquence, for the understanding of which new grammars and dictionaries were necessary. The

same innovating spirit which altered the common phrases of salutation, which turned hundreds of Johns and

Peters into Scaevolas and Aristogitons, and which expelled Sunday and Monday, January and February,

Ladyday and Christmas, from the calendar, in order to substitute Decadi and Primidi, Nivose and Pluviose,

Feasts of Opinion and Feasts of the Supreme Being, changed all the forms of official correspondence. For the

calm, guarded, and sternly courteous language which governments had long been accustomed to employ,

were substituted puns, interjections, Ossianic rants, rhetoric worthy only of a schoolboy, scurrility worthy

only of a fishwife. Of the phraseology which was now thought to be peculiarly well suited to a report or a

manifesto Barere had a greater command than any man of his time, and, during the short and sharp paroxysm

of the revolutionary delirium, passed for a great orator. When the fit was over, he was considered as what he

really was, a man of quick apprehension and fluent elocution, with no originality, with little information, and

with a taste as bad as his heart. His Reports were popularly called Carmagnoles. A few months ago we should

have had some difficulty in conveying to an English reader an exact notion of the state papers to which this

appellation was given. Fortunately a noble and distinguished person, whom her Majesty's Ministers have

thought qualified to fill the most important post in the empire, has made our task easy. Whoever has read

Lord Ellenborough's proclamations is able to form a complete idea of a Carmagnole.

The effect which Barere's discourses at one time produced is not to be wholly attributed to the perversion of

the national taste. The occasions on which he rose were frequently such as would have secured to the worst

speaker a favourable hearing. When any military advantage had been gained, he was generally deputed by the

Committee of Public Safety to announce the good news. The hall resounded with applause as he mounted the

tribune, holding the despatches in his hand. Deputies and strangers listened with delight while he told them

that victory was the order of the day; that the guineas of Pitt had been vainly lavished to hire machines six

feet high, carrying guns; that the flight of the English leopard deserved to be celebrated by Tyrtaeus; and that

the saltpetre dug out of the cellars of Paris had been turned into thunder, which would crush the Titan

Meanwhile the trial of the accused Girondists, who were under arrest in Paris, came on. They flattered

themselves with a vain hope of escape. They placed some reliance on their innocence, and some reliance on

their eloquence. They thought that shame would suffice to restrain any man, however violent and cruel, from

publicly committing the flagrant iniquity of condemning them to death. The Revolutionary Tribunal was new

to its functions. No member of the Convention had yet been executed; and it was probable that the boldest

Jacobin would shrink from being the first to violate the sanctity which was supposed to belong to the

The proceedings lasted some days. Gensonne and Brissot defended themselves with great ability and

presence of mind against the vile Hebert and Chaumette, who appeared as accusers. The eloquent voice of

Vergniaud was heard for the last time. He pleaded his own cause and that of his friends, with such force of

reason and elevation of sentiment that a murmur of pity and admiration rose from the audience. Nay, the

court itself, not yet accustomed to riot in daily carnage, showed signs of emotion. The sitting was adjourned;

and a rumour went forth that there would be an acquittal. The Jacobins met, breathing vengeance.

Robespierre undertook to be their organ. He rose on the following day in the Convention, and proposed a

decree of such atrocity that even among the acts of that year it can hardly be paralleled. By this decree the

tribunal was empowered to cut short the defence of the prisoners, to pronounce the case clear, and to pass

immediate judgment. One deputy made a faint opposition. Barere instantly sprang up to support

Robespierre Barere, the federalist; Barere, the author of that Commission of Twelve which was among the

chief causes of the hatred borne by Paris to the Girondists; Barere, who in these Memoirs denies that he ever

took any part against the Girondists; Barere, who has the effrontery to declare that he greatly loved and

esteemed Vergniaud. The decree was passed; and the tribunal, without suffering the prisoners to conclude

The following day was the saddest in the sad history of the Revolution. The sufferers were so innocent, so

brave, so eloquent, so accomplished, so young. Some of them were graceful and handsome youths of six or

seven and twenty. Vergniaud and Gensonne were little more than thirty. They had been only a few months

engaged in public affairs. In a few months the fame of their genius had filled Europe; and they were to die for

no crime but this, that they had wished to combine order, justice, and mercy with freedom. Their great fault

was want of courage. We mean want of political courageof that courage which is proof to clamour and

obloquy, and which meets great emergencies by daring and decisive measures. Alas! they had but too good

an opportunity of proving that they did not want courage to endure with manly cheerfulness the worst that

They were not the only victims of the noble cause. Madame Roland followed them to the scaffold with a

spirit as heroic as their own. Her husband was in a safe hidingplace, but could not bear to survive her. His

body was found on the high road near Rouen. He had fallen on his sword. Condorcet swallowed opium. At

Bordeaux the steel fell on the necks of the bold and quickwitted Guadet and of Barbaroux, the chief of those

enthusiasts from the Rhone whose valour, in the great crisis of the tenth of August, had turned back the tide

of battle from the Louvre to the Tuileries. In a field near the Garonne was found all that the wolves had left of

Petion, once honoured, greatly indeed beyond his deserts, as the model of republican virtue. We are far from

regarding even the best of the Girondists with unmixed admiration; but history owes to them this honourable

testimony, that, being free to choose whether they would be oppressors or victims, they deliberately and

And now began that strange period known by the name of the Reign of Terror. The Jacobins had prevailed.

This was their hour, and the power of darkness. The Convention was subjugated and reduced to profound

silence on the highest questions of state. The sovereignty passed to the Committee of Public Safety. To the

edicts framed by that Committee the representative assembly did not venture to offer even the species of

opposition which the ancient parliament had frequently offered to the mandates of the ancient kings. Six

persons held the chief power in the small cabinet which now domineered over FranceRobespierre, Saint

To some of these men, and of those who adhered to them, it is due to say that the fanaticism which had

emancipated them from the restraints of justice and compassion had emancipated them also from the

dominion of vulgar cupidity and of vulgar fear; that, while hardly knowing where to find an assignat of a few

francs to pay for a dinner, they expended with strict integrity the immense revenue which they collected by

every art of rapine; and that they were ready, in support of their cause, to mount the scaffold with as much

indifference as they showed when they signed the deathwarrants of aristocrats and priests. But no great

party can be composed of such materials as these. It is the inevitable law that such zealots as we have

described shall collect around them a multitude of slaves, of cowards, and of libertines, whose savage

tempers and licentious appetites, withheld only by the dread of law and magistracy from the worst excesses,

are called into full activity by the hope of immunity. A faction which, from whatever motive, relaxes the

great laws of morality is certain to be joined by the most immoral part of the community. This has been

repeatedly proved in religious wars. The war of the Holy Sepulchre, the Albigensian war, the Huguenot war,

the Thirty Years' war, all originated in pious zeal. That zeal inflamed the champions of the Church to such a

point that they regarded all generosity to the vanquished as a sinful weakness. The infidel, the heretic, was to

be run down like a mad dog. No outrage committed by the Catholic warrior on the miscreant enemy could

deserve punishment. As soon as it was known that boundless license was thus given to barbarity and

dissoluteness, thousands of wretches who cared nothing for the sacred cause, but who were eager to be

exempted from the police of peaceful cities, and the discipline of wellgoverned camps, flocked to the

standard of the faith. The men who had set up that statute were sincere, chaste, regardless of lucre, and

perhaps, where only themselves were concerned, not unforgiving; but round that standard were assembled

such gangs of rogues, ravishers, plunderers, and ferocious bravoes, as were scarcely ever found under the flag

of any state engaged in a mere temporal quarrel. In a very similar way was the Jacobin party composed.

There was a small nucleus of enthusiasts; round that nucleus was gathered a vast mass of ignoble depravity;

Then came those days when the most barbarous of all codes was administered by the most barbarous of all

tribunals; when no man could greet his neighbours, or say his prayers, or dress his hair, without danger of

committing a capital crime; when spies lurked in every corner; when the guillotine was long and hard at work

every morning; when the jails were filled as close as the hold of a slaveship; when the gutters ran foaming

with blood into the Seine; when it was death to be greatniece of a captain of the royal guards, or

halfbrother of a doctor of the Sorbonne, to express a doubt whether assignats would not fall, to hint that the

English had been victorious in the action of the first of June, to have a copy of one of Burke's pamphlets

locked up in a desk, to laugh at a Jacobin for taking the name of Cassius or Timoleon, or to call the Fifth

Sansculottide by its old superstitious name of St Matthew's Day. While the daily waggon loads of victims

were carried to their doom through the streets of Paris, the Proconsuls whom the sovereign Committee had

sent forth to the departments revelled in an extravagance of cruelty unknown even in the capital. The knife of

the deadly machine rose and fell too slow for their work of slaughter. Long rows of captives were mowed

down with grapeshot. Holes were made in the bottom of crowded barges. Lyons was turned into a desert. At

Arras even the cruel mercy of a speedy death was denied to the prisoners. All down the Loire, from Saumur

to the sea, great flocks of crows and kites feasted on naked corpses, twined together in hideous embraces. No

mercy was shown to sex or age. The number of young lads and of girls of seventeen who were murdered by

that execrable government is to be reckoned by hundreds. Babies torn from the breast were tossed from pike

to pike along the Jacobin ranks. One champion of liberty had his pockets well stuffed with ears. Another

swaggered about with the finger of a little child in his hat. A few months had sufficed to degrade France

It is absurd to say that any amount of public danger can justify a system like this, we do not say on Christian

principles, we do not say on the principles of a high morality, but even on principles of Machiavellian policy.

It is true that great emergencies call for activity and vigilance; it is true that they justify severity which, in

ordinary times, would deserve the name of cruelty. But indiscriminate severity can never, under any

circumstances, be useful. It is plain that the whole efficacy of punishment depends on the care with which the

guilty are distinguished. Punishment which strikes the guilty and the innocent promiscuously, operates

merely like a pestilence or a great convulsion of nature, and has no more tendency to prevent offences than

the cholera, or an earthquake like that of Lisbon, would have. The energy for which the Jacobin

administration is praised was merely the energy of the Malay who maddens himself with opium, draws his

knife, and runs amuck through the streets, slashing right and left at friends and foes. Such has never been the

energy of truly great rulers; of Elizabeth, for example, of Oliver, or of Frederick. They were not, indeed,

scrupulous. But, had they been less scrupulous than they were, the strength and amplitude of their minds

would have preserved them from crimes such as those which the small men of the Committee of Public

Safety took for daring strokes of policy. The great Queen who so long held her own against foreign and

domestic enemies, against temporal and spiritual arms; the great Protector who governed with more than

regal power, in despite both of royalists and republicans; the great King who, with a beaten army and an

exhausted treasury, defended his little dominions to the last against the united efforts of Russia, Austria, and

France; with what scorn would they have heard that it was impossible for them to strike a salutary terror into

the disaffected without sending schoolboys and schoolgirls to death by cartloads and boat loads!

The popular notion is, we believe, that the leading Terrorists were wicked men, but, at the same time, great

men. We can see nothing great about them but their wickedness. That their policy was daringly original is a

vulgar error. Their policy is as old as the oldest accounts which we have of human misgovernment. It seemed

new in France and in the eighteenth century only because it had been long disused, for excellent reasons, by

the enlightened part of mankind. But it has always prevailed, and still prevails, in savage and halfsavage

nations, and is the chief cause which prevents such nations from making advances towards civilisation.

Thousands of deys, of beys, of pachas, of rajahs, of nabobs, have shown themselves as great masters of

statecraft as the members of the Committee of Public Safety. Djezzar, we imagine, was superior to any of

them in their new line. In fact, there is not a petty tyrant in Asia or Africa so dull or so unlearned as not to be

fully qualified for the business of Jacobin police and Jacobin finance. To behead people by scores without

caring whether they are guilty or innocent; to wring money out of the rich by the help of jailers and

executioners; to rob the public creditor, and to put him to death if he remonstrates; to take loaves by force out

of the bakers' shops; to clothe and mount soldiers by seizing on one man's wool and linen, and on another

man's horses and saddles, without compensation; is of all modes of governing the simplest and most obvious.

Of its morality we at present say nothing. But surely it requires no capacity beyond that of a barbarian or a

child. By means like those which we have described, the Committee of Public Safety undoubtedly succeeded,

for a short time, in enforcing profound submission, and in raising immense funds. But to en force submission

by butchery, and to raise funds by spoliation, is not statesmanship. The real statesman is he who, in troubled

times, keeps down the turbulent without unnecessarily harrassing the wellaffected; and who, when great

pecuniary resources are needed, provides for the public exigencies without violating the security of property

and drying up the sources of future prosperity. Such a statesman, we are confident, might, in 1793, have

preserved the independence of France without shedding a drop of innocent blood, without plundering a single

warehouse. Unhappily, the Republic was subject to men who were mere demagogues and in no sense

statesmen. They could declaim at a club. They could lead a rabble to mischief. But they had no skill to

conduct the affairs of an empire. The want of skill they supplied for a time by atrocity and blind violence. For

legislative ability, fiscal ability, military ability, diplomatic ability, they had one substitute, the guillotine.

Indeed their exceeding ignorance, and the barrenness of their invention, are the best excuse for their murders

and robberies. We really believe that they would not have cut so many throats, and picked so many pockets,

That under their administration the war against the European Coalition was successfully conducted is true.

But that war had been successfully conducted before their elevation, and continued to be successfully

conducted after their fall. Terror was not the order of the day when Brussels opened its gates to Dumourier.

Terror had ceased to be the order of the day when Piedmont and Lombardy were conquered by Bonaparte.

The truth is, that France was saved, not by the Committee of Public Safety, but by the energy, patriotism, and

valour of the French people. Those high qualities were victorious in spite of the incapacity of rulers whose

We have not time to tell how the leaders of the savage faction at length began to avenge mankind on each

other: how the craven Hebert was dragged wailing and trembling to his doom; how the nobler Danton, moved

by a late repentance, strove in vain to repair the evil which he had wrought, and half redeemed the great

Our business is with Barere. In all those things he was not only consenting, but eagerly and joyously forward.

Not merely was he one of the guilty administration. He was the man to whom was especially assigned the

office of proposing and defending outrages on justice and humanity, and of furnishing to atrocious schemes

an appropriate garb of atrocious rodomontade. Barere first proclaimed from the tribune of the Convention

that terror must be the order of the day. It was by Barere that the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was

provided with the aid of a public accuser worthy of such a court, the infamous Fouquier Tinville. It was

Barere who, when one of the old members of the National Assembly had been absolved by the Revolutionary

Tribunal, gave orders that a fresh jury should be summoned. "Acquit one of the National Assembly!" he

cried. "The Tribunal is turning against the Revolution." It is unnecessary to say that the prisoner's head was

soon in the basket. It was Barere who moved that the city of Lyons should be destroyed. "Let the plough," he

cried from the tribune, "pass over her. Let her name cease to exist. The rebels are conquered; but are they all

exterminated? No weakness. No mercy. Let every one be smitten. Two words will suffice to tell the whole.

Lyons made war on liberty; Lyons is no more." When Toulon was taken Barere came forward to announce

the event. "The conquest," said the apostate Brissotine, "won by the Mountain over the Brissotines must be

commemorated by a mark set on the place where Toulon once stood. The national thunder must crush the

house of every trader in the town. When Camille Desmoulins, long distinguished among the republicans by

zeal and ability, dared to raise his eloquent voice against the Reign of Terror, and to point out the close

analogy between the government which then oppressed France and the government of the worst of the

Caesars, Barere rose to complain of the weak compassion which tried to revive the hopes of the aristocracy.

"Whoever," he said, "is nobly born is a man to be suspected. Every priest, every frequenter of the old court,

every lawyer, every banker, is a man to be suspected. Every person who grumbles at the course which the

Revolution takes is a man to be suspected. There are whole castes already tried and condemned. There are

callings which carry their doom with them. There are relations of blood which the law regards with an evil

eye. Republicans of France!" yelled the renegade Girondist, the old enemy of the Mountain"Republicans

of France! the Brissotines led you by gentle means to slavery. The Mountain leads you by strong measures to

freedom. Oh! who can count the evils which a false compassion may produce?" When the friends of Danton

mustered courage to express a wish that the Convention would at least hear him in his own defence before it

sent him to certain death, the voice of Barere was the loudest in opposition to their prayer. When the crimes

of Lebon, one of the worst, if not the very worst, of the viceregents of the Committee of Public Safety, had so

maddened the people of the Department of the North that they resorted to the desperate expedient of

imploring the protection of the Convention, Barere pleaded the cause of the accused tyrant, and threatened

the petitioners with the utmost vengeance of the government. "These charges," he said, "have been suggested

by wily aristocrats. The man who crushes the enemies of the people, though he may be hurried by his zeal

into some excesses, can never be a proper object of censure. The proceedings of Lebon may have been a little

harsh as to form." One of the small irregularities thus gently censured was this: Lebon kept a wretched man a

quarter of an hour under the knife of the guillotine, in order to torment him, by reading to him, before he was

despatched, a letter, the contents of which were supposed to be such as would aggravate even the bitterness of

death. "But what," proceeded Barere, "is not permitted to the hatred of a republican against aristocracy? How

many generous sentiments atone for what may perhaps seem acrimonious in the prosecution of public

enemies? Revolutionary measures are always to be spoken of with respect. Liberty is a virgin whose veil it is

After this, it would be idle to dwell on facts which would indeed, of themselves, suffice to render a name

infamous, but which make no perceptible addition to the great infamy of Barere. It would be idle, for

example, to relate how he, a man of letters, a member of an Academy of Inscriptions, was foremost in that

war against learning, art, and history which disgraced the Jacobin government; how he recommended a

general conflagration of libraries; how he proclaimed that all records of events anterior to the Revolution

ought to be destroyed; how he laid waste the Abbey of St Denis, pulled down monuments consecrated by the

veneration of ages, and scattered on the wind the dust of ancient kings. He was, in truth, seldom so well

employed as when he turned for a moment from making war on the living to make war on the dead.

Equally idle would it be to dilate on his sensual excesses. That in Barere as in the whole breed of Neros,

Caligulas, and Domitians whom he resembled, voluptuousness was mingled with cruelty; that he withdrew,

twice in every decade, from the work of blood, to the smiling gardens of Clichy, and there forgot public cares

in the madness of wine and in the arms of courtesans, has often been repeated. M. Hippolyte Carnot does not

altogether deny the truth of these stories, but justly observes that Barere's dissipation was not carried to such

a point as to interfere with his industry. Nothing can be more true. Barere was by no means so much addicted

to debauchery as to neglect the work of murder. It was his boast that, even during his hours of recreation, he

cut out work for the Revolutionary Tribunal. To those who expressed a fear that his exertions would hurt his

health, he gaily answered that he was less busy than they thought. "The guillotine," he said, "does all; the

guillotine governs." For ourselves, we are much more disposed to look indulgently on the pleasures which he

"Atque utinam his potius nugis tota illa dedisset Tempora saevitiae, claras quibus abstulit urbi Illustresque

An immoderate appetite for sensual gratifications is undoubtedly a blemish on the fame of Henry the Fourth,

of Lord Somers, of Mr Fox. But the vices of honest men are the virtues of Barere.

And now Barere had become a really cruel man. It was from mere pusillanimity that he had perpetrated his

first great crimes. But the whole history of our race proves that the taste for the misery of others is a taste

which minds not naturally ferocious may too easily acquire, and which, when once acquired, is as strong as

any of the propensities with which we are born. A very few months had sufficed to bring this man into a state

of mind in which images of despair, wailing, and death had an exhilarating effect on him, and inspired him as

wine and love inspire men of free and joyous natures. The cart creaking under its daily freight of victims,

ancient men and lads, and fair young girls, the binding of the hands, the thrusting of the head out of the little

national sashwindow, the crash of the axe, the pool of blood beneath the scaffold, the heads rolling by

scores in the panierthese things were to him what Lalage and a cask of Falernian were to Horace, what

Rosette and a bottle of iced champagne are to De Beranger. As soon as he began to speak of slaughter his

heart seemed to be enlarged, and his fancy to become unusually fertile of conceits and gasconades.

Robespierre, Saint Just, and Billaud, whose barbarity was the effect of earnest and gloomy hatred, were, in

his view, men who made a toil of a pleasure. Cruelty was no such melancholy business, to be gone about with

an austere brow and a whining tone; it was a recreation, fitly accompanied by singing and laughing. In truth,

Robespierre and Barere might be well compared to the two renowned hangmen of Louis the Eleventh. They

were alike insensible of pity, alike bent on havoc. But, while they murdered, one of them frowned and canted,

the other grinned and joked. For our own part, we prefer Jean qui pleure to Jean qui rit.

In the midst of the funeral gloom which overhung Paris, a gaiety stranger and more ghastly than the horrors

of the prison and the scaffold distinguished the dwelling of Barere. Every morning a crowd of suitors

assembled to implore his protection. He came forth in his rich dressinggown, went round the antechamber,

dispensed smiles and promises among the obsequious crowd, addressed himself with peculiar animation to

every handsome woman who appeared in the circle, and complimented her in the florid style of Gascony on

the bloom of her cheeks and the lustre of her eyes. When he had enjoyed the fear and anxiety of his

suppliants he dismissed them, and flung all their memorials unread into the fire. This was the best way, he

conceived, to prevent arrears of business from accumulating. Here he was only an imitator. Cardinal Dubois

had been in the habit of clearing his table of papers in the same way. Nor was this the only point in which we

could point out a resemblance between the worst statesman of the monarchy and the worst statesman of the

Of Barere's peculiar vein of pleasantry a notion may be formed from an anecdote which one of his intimate

associates, a juror of the revolutionary tribunal, has related. A courtesan who bore a conspicuous part in the

orgies of Clichy implored Barere to use his power against a headdress which did not suit her style of face,

and which a rival beauty was trying to bring into fashion. One of the magistrates of the capital was

summoned and received the necessary orders. Aristocracy, Barere said, was again rearing its front. These new

wigs were counterrevolutionary. He had reason to know that they were made out of the long fair hair of

handsome aristocrats who had died by the national chopper. Every lady who adorned herself with the relics of

criminals might justly be suspected of incivism. This ridiculous lie imposed on the authorities of Paris.

Female citizens were solemnly warned against the obnoxious ringlets, and were left to choose between their

headdresses and their heads. Barere's delight at the success of this facetious fiction was quite extravagant:

he could not tell the story without going into such convulsions of laughter as made his hearers hope that he

was about to choke. There was something peculiarly tickling and exhilarating to his mind in this grotesque

combination of the frivolous with the horrible, of false locks and curlingirons with spouting arteries and

But, though Barere succeeded in earning the honourable nicknames of the Witling of Terror, and the

Anacreon of the Guillotine, there was one place where it was long remembered to his disadvantage that he

had, for a time, talked the language of humanity and moderation. That place was the Jacobin club. Even after

he had borne the chief part in the massacre of the Girondists, in the murder of the Queen, in the destruction of

Lyons, he durst not show himself within that sacred precinct. At one meeting of the society, a member

complained that the committee to which the supreme direction of affairs was entrusted, after all the changes

which had been made, still contained one man who was not trustworthy. Robespierre, whose influence over

the Jacobins was boundless, undertook the defence of his colleague, owned there was some ground for what

had been said, but spoke highly of Barere's industry and aptitude for business. This seasonable interposition

silenced the accuser; but it was long before the neophyte could venture to appear at the club.

At length a masterpiece of wickedness, unique, we think, even among Barere's great achievements, obtained

his full pardon even from that rigid conclave. The insupportable tyranny of the Committee of Public Safety

had at length brought the minds of men, and even of women, into a fierce and hard temper, which defied or

welcomed death. The life which might be any morning taken away, in consequence of the whisper of a

private enemy, seemed of little value. It was something to die after smiting one of the oppressors; it was

something to bequeath to the surviving tyrants a terror not inferior to that which they had themselves

inspired. Human nature, hunted and worried to the utmost, now turned furiously to bay. Fouquier Tinville

was afraid to walk the streets; a pistol was snapped at Collot D'Herbois; a young girl, animated apparently by

the spirit of Charlotte Corday, attempted to obtain an interview with Robespierre. Suspicions arose; she was

searched; and two knives were found about her. She was questioned, and spoke of the Jacobin domination

with resolute scorn and aversion. It is unnecessary to say that she was sent to the guillotine. Barere declared

from the tribune that the cause of these attempts was evident. Pitt and his guineas had done the whole. The

English Government had organised a vast system of murder, had armed the hand of Charlotte Corday, and

had now, by similar means, attacked two of the most eminent friends of liberty in France. It is needless to say

that these imputations were, not only false, but destitute of all show of truth. Nay, they were demonstrably

absurd: for the assassins to whom Barere referred rushed on certain death, a sure proof that they were not

hirelings. The whole wealth of England would not have bribed any sane person to do what Charlotte Corday

did. But, when we consider her as an enthusiast, her conduct is perfectly natural. Even those French writers

who are childish enough to believe that the English Government contrived the infernal machine and strangled

the Emperor Paul have fully acquitted Mr Pitt of all share in the death of Marat and in the attempt on

Robespierre. Yet on calumnies so futile as those which we have mentioned did Barere ground a motion at

which all Christendom stood aghast. He proposed a decree that no quarter should be given to any English or

Hanoverian soldier. (M. Hippolyte Carnot does his best to excuse this decree. His abuse of England is merely

laughable. England has managed to deal with enemies of a very different sort from either himself or his hero.

One disgraceful blunder, however, we think it right to notice. M. Hippolyte Carnot asserts that a motion

similar to that of Barere was made in the English Parliament by the late Lord Fitzwilliam. This assertion is

false. We defy M. Hippolyte Carnot to state the date and terms of the motion of which he speaks. We do not

accuse him of intentional misrepresentation; but we confidently accuse him of extreme ignorance and

temerity. Our readers will be amused to learn on what authority he has ventured to publish such a fable. He

quotes, not the journals of the Lords, not the Parliamentary Debates, but a ranting message of the Executive

Directory to the Five Hundred, a message, too, the whole meaning of which he has utterly misunderstood.)

His Carmagnole was worthy of the proposition with which it concluded. "That one Englishman should be

spared, that for the slaves of George, for the human machines of York, the vocabulary of our armies should

contain such a word as generosity, this is what the National Convention cannot endure. War to the death

against every English soldier. If last year, at Dunkirk, quarter had been refused to them when they asked it on

their knees, if our troops had exterminated them all, instead of suffering them to infest our fortresses by their

presence, the English government would not have renewed its attack on our frontiers this year. It is only the

dead man who never comes back. What is this moral pestilence which has introduced into our armies false

ideas of humanity? That the English were to be treated with indulgence was the philanthropic notion of the

Brissotines; it was the patriotic practice of Dumourier. But humanity consists in exterminating our enemies.

No mercy to the execrable Englishman. Such are the sentiments of the true Frenchman; for he knows that he

belongs to a nation revolutionary as nature, powerful as freedom, ardent as the saltpetre which she has just

torn from the entrails of the earth. Soldiers of liberty, when victory places Englishmen at your mercy, strike!

None of them must return to the servile soil of Great Britain; none must pollute the free soil of France."

The Convention, thoroughly tamed and silenced, acquiesced in Barere's motion without debate. And now at

last the doors of the Jacobin Club were thrown open to the disciple who had surpassed his masters. He was

For a time he was not without hope that his decree would be carried into full effect. Intelligence arrived from

the seat of war of a sharp contest between some French and English troops, in which the Republicans had the

advantage, and in which no prisoners had been made. Such things happen occasionally in all wars. Barere,

however, attributed the ferocity of this combat to his darling decree, and entertained the Convention with

"The Republicans," he said, "saw a division in red uniform at a distance. The redcoats are attacked with the

bayonet. Not one of them escapes the blows of the Republicans. All the redcoats have been killed. No

mercy, no indulgence, has been shown towards the villains. Not an Englishman whom the Republicans could

reach is now living. How many prisoners should you guess that we have made? One single prisoner is the

And now this bad man's craving for blood had become insatiable. The more he quaffed, the more he thirsted.

He had begun with the English; but soon he came down with a proposition for new massacres. "All the

troops," he said, "of the coalesced tyrants in garrison at Conde, Valenciennes, Le Quesnoy, and Landrecies,

ought to be put to the sword unless they surrender at discretion in twentyfour hours. The English, of course,

will be admitted to no capitulation whatever. With the English we have no treaty but death. As to the rest,

surrender at discretion in twenty four hours, or death, these are our conditions. If the slaves resist, let them

feel the edge of the sword." And then he waxed facetious. "On these terms the Republic is willing to give

them a lesson in the art of war." At that jest, some hearers, worthy of such a speaker, set up a laugh. Then he

became serious again. "Let the enemy perish," he cried, "I have already said it from this tribune. It is only the

dead man who never comes back. Kings will not conspire against us in the grave. Armies will not fight

against us when they are annihilated. Let our war with them be a war of extermination. What pity is due to

slaves whom the Emperor leads to war under the cane; whom the King of Prussia beats to the shambles with

the flat of the sword; and whom the Duke of York makes drunk with rum and gin?" And at the rum and gin

If Barere had been able to effect his purpose, it is difficult to estimate the extent of the calamity which he

would have brought on the human race. No government, however averse to cruelty, could, in justice to its

own subjects, have given quarter to enemies who gave none. Retaliation would have been, not merely

justifiable, but a sacred duty. It would have been necessary for Howe and Nelson to make every French sailor

whom they took walk the plank. England has no peculiar reason to dread the introduction of such a system.

On the contrary, the operation of Barere's new law of war would have been more unfavourable to his

countrymen than to ours; for we believe that, from the beginning to the end of the war, there never was a time

at which the number of French prisoners in England was not greater than the number of English prisoners in

France; and so, we apprehend, it will be in all wars while England retains her maritime superiority. Had the

murderous decree of the Convention been in force from 1794 to 1815, we are satisfied that, for every

Englishman slain by the French, at least three Frenchmen would have been put to the sword by the English. It

is, therefore, not as Englishmen, but as members of the great society of mankind, that we speak with

indignation and horror of the change which Barere attempted to introduce. The mere slaughter would have

been the smallest part of the evil. The butchering of a single unarmed man in cold blood, under an act of the

legislature, would have produced more evil than the carnage of ten such fields as Albuera. Public law would

have been subverted from the foundations; national enmities would have been inflamed to a degree of rage

which happily it is not easy for us to conceive; cordial peace would have been impossible. The moral

character of the European nations would have been rapidly and deeply corrupted; for in all countries those

men whose calling is to put their lives in jeopardy for the defence of the public weal enjoy high

consideration, and are considered as the best arbitrators on points of honour and manly bearing. With the

standard of morality established in the military profession the general standard of morality must to a great

extent sink or rise. It is, therefore, a fortunate circumstance that, during a long course of years, respect for the

weak and clemency towards the vanquished have been considered as qualities not less essential to the

accomplished soldier than personal courage. How long would this continue to be the case, if the slaying of

prisoners were a part of the daily duty of the warrior? What man of kind and generous nature would, under

such a system, willingly bear arms? Who, that was compelled to bear arms, would long continue kind and

generous? And is it not certain that, if barbarity towards the helpless became the characteristic of military

men, the taint must rapidly spread to civil and to domestic life, and must show itself in all the dealings of the

strong with the weak, of husbands with wives, of employers with work men, of creditors with debtors?

But, thank God, Barere's decree was a mere dead letter. It was to be executed by men very different from

those who, in the interior of France, were the instruments of the Committee of Public Safety, who prated at

Jacobin Clubs, and ran to Fouquier Tinville with charges of incivism against women whom they could not

seduce, and bankers from whom they could not extort money. The warriors who, under Hoche, had guarded

the walls of Dunkirk, and who, under Kleber, had made good the defence of the wood of Monceaux, shrank

with horror from an office more degrading than that of the hangman. "The Convention," said an officer to his

men, "has sent orders that all the English prisoners shall be shot." "We will not shoot them" answered a

stouthearted sergeant. "Send them to the Convention. If the deputies take pleasure in killing a prisoner, they

may kill him themselves, and eat him too, like savages as they are." This was the sentiment of the whole

army. Bonaparte, who thoroughly understood war, who at Jaffa and elsewhere gave ample proof that he was

not unwilling to strain the laws of war to their utmost rigour, and whose hatred of England amounted to a

folly, always spoke of Barere's decree with loathing, and boasted that the army had refused to obey the

Such disobedience on the part of any other class of citizens would have been instantly punished by wholesale

massacre; but the Committee of Public Safety was aware that the discipline which had tamed the unwarlike

population of the fields and cities might not answer in camps. To fling people by scores out of a boat, and,

when they catch hold of it, to chop off their fingers with a hatchet, is undoubtedly a very agreeable pastime

for a thoroughbred Jacobin, when the sufferers are, as at Nantes, old confessors, young girls, or women with

child. But such sport might prove a little dangerous if tried upon grim ranks of grenadiers, marked with the

Barere, however, found some consolation. If he could not succeed in murdering the English and the

Hanoverians, he was amply indemnified by a new and vast slaughter of his own countrymen and

countrywomen. If the defence which has been set up for the members of the Committee of Public Safety had

been well founded, if it had been true that they governed with extreme severity only because the republic was

in extreme peril, it is clear that the severity would have diminished as the peril diminished. But the fact is,

that those cruelties for which the public danger is made a plea became more and more enormous as the

danger became less and less, and reached the full height when there was no longer any danger at all. In the

autumn of 1793, there was undoubtedly reason to apprehend that France might be unable to maintain the

struggle against the European coalition. The enemy was triumphant on the frontiers. More than half the

departments disowned the authority of the Convention. But at that time eight or ten necks a day were thought

an ample allowance for the guillotine of the capital. In the summer of 1794, Bordeaux, Toulon, Caen, Lyons,

Marseilles, had submitted to the ascendency of Paris. The French arms were victorious under the Pyrenees

and on the Sambre. Brussels had fallen. Prussia announced her intention of withdrawing from the contest.

The Republic, no longer content with defending her own independence, was beginning to meditate conquest

beyond the Alps and the Rhine. She was now more formidable to her neighbours than ever Louis the

Fourteenth had been. And now the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris was not content with forty, fifty, sixty

heads in a morning. It was just after a series of victories, which destroyed the whole force of the single

argument which has been urged in defence of the system of terror, that the Committee of Public Safety

resolved to infuse into that system an energy hitherto unknown. It was proposed to reconstruct the

Revolutionary Tribunal, and to collect in the space of two pages the whole revolutionary jurisprudence. Lists

of twelve judges and fifty jurors were made out from among the fiercest Jacobins. The substantive law was

simply this, that whatever the tribunal should think pernicious to the republic was a capital crime. The law of

evidence was simply this, that whatever satisfied the jurors was sufficient proof. The law of procedure was of

a piece with everything else. There was to be an advocate against the prisoner, and no advocate for him. It

was expressly declared that, if the jurors were in any manner convinced of the guilt of the prisoner, they

might convict him without hearing a single witness. The only punishment which the court could inflict was

Robespierre proposed this decree. When he had read it, a murmur rose from the Convention. The fear which

had long restrained the deputies from opposing the Committee was overcome by a stronger fear. Every man

felt the knife at his throat. "The decree," said one, "is of grave importance. I move that it be printed and the

debate be adjourned. If such a measure were adopted without time for consideration, I would blow my brains

out at once." The motion for adjournment was seconded. Then Barere sprang up. "It is impossible," he said,

"that there can be any difference of opinion among us as to a law like this, a law so favourable in all respects

to patriots; a law which insures the speedy punishment of conspirators. If there is to be an adjournment, I

must insist that it shall not be for more than three days." The opposition was overawed; the decree was

passed; and, during the six weeks which followed, the havoc was such as has never been known before.

And now the evil was beyond endurance. That timid majority which had for a time supported the Girondists,

and which had, after their fall, contented itself with registering in silence the decrees of the Committee of

Public Safety, at length drew courage from despair. Leaders of bold and firm character were not wanting,

men such as Fouche and Tallien, who, having been long conspicuous among the chiefs of the Mountain, now

found that their own lives, or lives still dearer to them than their own, were in extreme peril. Nor could it be

longer kept secret that there was a schism in the despotic committee. On one side were Robespierre, Saint

Just, and Couthon; on the other, Collot and Billaud. Barere leaned towards these last, but only leaned towards

them. As was ever his fashion when a great crisis was at hand, he fawned alternately on both parties, struck

alternately at both, and held himself in readiness to chant the praises or to sign the deathwarrant of either. In

any event his Carmagnole was ready. The tree of liberty, the blood of traitors, the dagger of Brutus, the

guineas of perfidious Albion, would do equally well for Billaud and for Robespierre.

The first attack which was made on Robespierre was indirect. An old woman named Catherine Theot, half

maniac, half impostor, was protected by him, and exercised a strange influence over his mind; for he was

naturally prone to superstition, and, having abjured the faith in which he had been brought up, was looking

about for something to believe. Barere drew up a report against Catherine, which contained many facetious

conceits, and ended, as might be expected, with a motion for sending her and some other wretched creatures

of both sexes to the Revolutionary Tribunal, or, in other words, to death. This report, however, he did not

dare to read to the Convention himself. Another member, less timid, was induced to farther the cruel

buffoonery; and the real author enjoyed in security the dismay and vexation of Robespierre.

Barere now thought that he had done enough on one side, and that it was time to make his peace with the

other. On the seventh of Thermidor, he pronounced in the Convention a panegyric on Robespierre. "That

representative of the people," he said, "enjoys a reputation for patriotism, earned by five years of exertion,

and by unalterable fidelity to the principles of independence and liberty." On the eighth of Thermidor, it

became clear that a decisive struggle was at hand. Robespierre struck the first blow. He mounted the tribune,

and uttered a long invective on his opponents. It was moved that his discourse should be printed; and Barere

spoke for the printing. The sense of the Convention soon appeared to be the other way; and Barere apologised

for his former speech, and implored his colleagues to abstain from disputes which could be agreeable only to

Pitt and York. On the next day, the evermemorable ninth of Thermidor, came the real tug of war. Tallien,

bravely taking his life in his hand, led the onset. Billaud followed; and then all that infinite hatred which had

long been kept down by terror burst forth, and swept every barrier before it. When at length the voice of

Robespierre, drowned by the President's bell, and by shouts of "Down with the tyrant!" had died away in

hoarse gasping, Barere rose. He began with timid and doubtful phrases, watched the effect of every word he

uttered, and, when the feeling of the Assembly had been unequivocally manifested, declared against

Robespierre. But it was not till the people out of doors, and especially the gunners of Paris, had espoused the

cause of the Convention, that Barere felt quite at ease. Then he sprang to the tribune, poured forth a

Carmagnole about Pisistratus and Catiline, and concluded by moving that the heads of Robespierre and

Robespierre's accomplices should be cut off without a trial. The motion was carried. On the following

morning the vanquished members of the Committee of Public Safety and their principal adherents suffered

death. It was exactly one year since Barere had commenced his career of slaughter by moving the

proscription of his old allies the Girondists. We greatly doubt whether any human being has ever succeeded

The ninth of Thermidor is one of the great epochs in the history of Europe. It is true that the three members of

the Committee of Public Safety who triumphed were by no means better men than the three who fell. Indeed,

we are inclined to think that of these six statesmen the least bad were Robespierre and Saint Just, whose

cruelty was the effect of sincere fanaticism operating on narrow understandings and acrimonious tempers.

The worst of the six was, beyond all doubt, Barere, who had no faith in any part of the system which he

upheld by persecution; who, while he sent his fellowcreatures to death for being the third cousins of

royalists, had not in the least made up his mind that a republic was better than a monarchy; who, while he

slew his old friends for federalism, was himself far more a federalist than any of them; who had become a

murderer merely for his safety, and who continued to be a murderer merely for his pleasure.

The tendency of the vulgar is to embody everything. Some individual is selected, and often selected very

injudicially, as the representative of every great movement of the public mind, of every great revolution in

human affairs; and on this individual are concentrated all the love and all the hatred, all the admiration and all

the contempt, which he ought rightfully to share with a whole party, a whole sect, a whole nation, a whole

generation. Perhaps no human being has suffered so much from this propensity of the multitude as

Robespierre. He is regarded, not merely as what he was, an envious, malevolent zealot, but as the incarnation

of Terror, as Jacobinism personified. The truth is, that it was not by him that the system of terror was carried

to the last extreme. The most horrible days in the history of the Revolutionary Tribunal of Paris were those

which immediately preceded the ninth of Thermidor. Robespierre had then ceased to attend the meetings of

the sovereign Committee; and the direction of affairs was really in the hands of Billaud, of Collot, and of

It had never occurred to those three tyrants that, in overthrowing Robespierre, they were overthrowing that

system of terror to which they were more attached than he had ever been. Their object was to go on slaying

even more mercilessly than before. But they had misunderstood the nature of the great crisis which had at last

arrived. The yoke of the Committee was broken for ever. The Convention had regained its liberty, had tried

its strength, had vanquished and punished its enemies. A great reaction had commenced. Twentyfour hours

after Robespierre had ceased to live, it was moved and carried, amidst loud bursts of applause, that the

sittings of the Revolutionary Tribunal should be suspended. Billaud was not at that moment present. He

entered the hall soon after, learned with indignation what had passed, and moved that the vote should be

rescinded. But loud cries of "No, no!" rose from those benches which had lately paid mute obedience to his

commands. Barere came forward on the same day, and abjured the Convention not to relax the system of

terror. "Beware, above all things," he cried, "of that fatal moderation which talks of peace and of clemency.

Let aristocracy know that here she will find only enemies sternly bent on vengeance, and judges who have no

pity." But the day of the Carmagnoles was over: the restraint of fear had been relaxed; and the hatred with

which the nation regarded the Jacobin dominion broke forth with ungovernable violence. Not more strongly

did the tide of public opinion run against the old monarchy and aristocracy, at the time of the taking of the

Bastile, than it now ran against the tyranny of the Mountain. From every dungeon the prisoners came forth as

they had gone in, by hundreds. The decree which forbade the soldiers of the republic to give quarter to the

English was repealed by an unanimous vote, amidst loud acclamations; nor, passed as it was, disobeyed as it

was, and rescinded as it was, can it be with justice considered as a blemish on the fame of the French nation.

The Jacobin Club was refractory. It was suppressed without resistance. The surviving Girondist deputies, who

had concealed themselves from the vengeance of their enemies in caverns and garrets, were readmitted to

their seats in the Convention. No day passed without some signal reparation of injustice; no street in Paris

was without some trace of the recent change. In the theatre, the bust of Marat was pulled down from its

pedestal and broken in pieces, amidst the applause of the audience. His carcass was ejected from the

Pantheon. The celebrated picture of his death, which had hung in the hall of the Convention, was removed.

The savage inscriptions with which the walls of the city had been covered disappeared; and, in place of death

and terror, humanity, the watchword of the new rulers, was everywhere to be seen. In the meantime, the gay

spirit of France, recently subdued by oppression, and now elated by the joy of a great deliverance, wantoned

in a thousand forms. Art, taste, luxury, revived. Female beauty regained its empirean empire strengthened

by the remembrance of all the tender and all the sublime virtues which women, delicately bred and reputed

frivolous, had displayed during the evil days. Refined manners, chivalrous sentiments, followed in the train

of love. The dawn of the Arctic summer day after the Arctic winter night, the great unsealing of the waters,

the awakening of animal and vegetable life, the sudden softening of the air, the sudden blooming of the

flowers, the sudden bursting of old forests into verdure, is but a feeble type of that happiest and most genial

But, in the midst of the revival of all kind and generous sentiments, there was one portion of the community

against which mercy itself seemed to cry out for vengeance. The chiefs of the late government and their tools

were now never named but as the men of blood, the drinkers of blood, the cannibals. In some parts of France,

where the creatures of the Mountain had acted with peculiar barbarity, the populace took the law into its own

hands and meted out justice to the Jacobins with the true Jacobin measure, but at Paris the punishments were

inflicted with order and decency, and were few when compared with the number, and lenient when compared

with the enormity, of the crimes. Soon after the ninth of Thermidor, two of the vilest of mankind, Fouquier

Tinville, whom Barere had placed at the Revolutionary Tribunal, and Lebon, whom Barere had defended in

the Convention, were placed under arrest. A third miscreant soon shared their fate, Carrier, the tyrant of

Nantes. The trials of these men brought to light horrors surpassing anything that Suetonius and Lampridius

have related of the worst Caesars. But it was impossible to punish subordinate agents, who, bad as they were,

had only acted in accordance with the spirit of the government which they served, and, at the same time, to

grant impunity to the heads of the wicked administration. A cry was raised, both within and without the

Collot and Billaud, with all their vices, appear to have been men of resolute natures. They made no

submission; but opposed to the hatred of mankind, at first a fierce resistance, and afterwards a dogged and

sullen endurance. Barere, on the other hand, as soon as he began to understand the real nature of the

revolution of Thermidor, attempted to abandon the Mountain, and to obtain admission among his old friends

of the moderate party. He declared everywhere that he had never been in favour of severe measures; that he

was a Girondist; that he had always condemned and lamented the manner in which the Brissotine deputies

had been treated. He now preached mercy from that tribune from which he had recently preached

extermination. "The time," he said, "has come at which our clemency may be indulged without danger. We

may now safely consider temporary imprisonment as an adequate punishment for political misdemeanours."

It was only a fortnight since, from the same place, he had declaimed against the moderation which dared even

to talk of clemency; it was only a fortnight since he had ceased to send men and women to the guillotine of

Paris, at the rate of three hundred a week. He now wished to make his peace with the moderate party at the

expense of the Terrorists, as he had, a year before, made his peace with the Terrorists at the expense of the

moderate party. But he was disappointed. He had left himself no retreat. His face, his voice, his rants, his

jokes, had become hateful to the Convention. When he spoke he was interrupted by murmurs. Bitter

reflections were daily cast on his cowardice and perfidy. On one occasion Carnot rose to give an account of a

victory, and so far forgot the gravity of his own character as to indulge in the sort of oratory which Barere

had affected on similar occasions. He was interrupted by cries of "No more Carmagnoles!" "No more of

At length, five months after the revolution of Thermidor, the Convention resolved that a committee of

twentyone members should be appointed to examine into the conduct of Billaud, Collot, and Barere. In

some weeks the report was made. From that report we learn that a paper had been discovered, signed by

Barere, and containing a proposition for adding the last improvement to the system of terror. France was to be

divided into circuits; itinerant revolutionary tribunals, composed of trusty Jacobins, were to move from

Barere, in his defence, insisted that no speech or motion which he had made in the Convention could, without

a violation of the freedom of debate, be treated as a crime. He was asked how he could resort to such a mode

of defence, after putting to death so many deputies on account of opinions expressed in the Convention. He

had nothing to say, but that it was much to be regretted that the sound principle had ever been violated.

He arrogated to himself a large share of the merit of the revolution in Thermidor. The men who had risked

their lives to effect that revolution, and who knew that, if they had failed, Barere would, in all probability,

have moved the decree for beheading them without a trial, and have drawn up a proclamation announcing

their guilt and their punishment to all France, were by no means disposed to acquiesce in his claims. He was

reminded that, only fortyeight hours before the decisive conflict, he had, in the tribune, been profuse of

adulation to Robespierre. His answer to this reproach is worthy of himself. "It was necessary," he said, "to

dissemble. It was necessary to flatter Robespierre's vanity, and, by panegyric, to impel him to the attack. This

was the motive which induced me to load him with those praises of which you complain. Who ever blamed

The accused triumvirs had only one chance of escaping punishment. There was severe distress at that moment

among the working people of the capital. This distress the Jacobins attributed to the reaction of Thermidor, to

the lenity with which the aristocrats were now treated, and to the measures which had been adopted against

the chiefs of the late administration. Nothing is too absurd to be believed by a populace which has not

breakfasted, and which does not know how it is to dine. The rabble of the Faubourg St Antoine rose, menaced

the deputies, and demanded with loud cries the liberation of the persecuted patriots. But the Convention was

no longer such as it had been, when similar means were employed too successfully against the Girondists. Its

spirit was roused. Its strength had been proved. Military means were at its command. The tumult was

suppressed: and it was decreed that same evening that Collot, Billaud, and Barere should instantly be

The next day the order of the Convention was executed. The account which Barere has given of his journey is

the most interesting and the most trustworthy part of these Memoirs. There is no witness so infamous that a

court of justice will not take his word against himself; and even Barere may be believed when he tells us how

The carriage in which he was to travel passed, surrounded by armed men, along the street of St Honore. A

crowd soon gathered round it and increased every moment. On the long flight of steps before the church of St

Roch stood rows of eager spectators. It was with difficulty that the coach could make its way through those

who hung upon it, hooting, cursing, and striving to burst the doors. Barere thought his life in danger, and was

conducted at his own request to a public office, where he hoped that he might find shelter till the crowd

should disperse. In the meantime, another discussion on his fate took place in the Convention. It was

proposed to deal with him as he had dealt with better men, to put him out of the pale of the law, and to deliver

him at once without any trial to the headsman. But the humanity which, since the ninth of Thermidor, had

generally directed the public councils restrained the deputies from taking this course.

It was now night; and the streets gradually became quiet. The clock struck twelve; and Barere, under a strong

guard, again set forth on his journey. He was conducted over the river to the place where the Orleans road

branches off from the southern boulevard. Two travelling carriages stood there. In one of them was Billaud,

attended by two officers; in the other two more officers were waiting to receive Barere. Collot was already on

At Orleans, a city which had suffered cruelly from the Jacobin tyranny, the three deputies were surrounded by

a mob bent on tearing them to pieces. All the national guards of the neighbourhood were assembled; and this

force was not greater than the emergency required; for the multitude pursued the carriages far on the road to

At Amboise the prisoners learned that Tours was ready to receive them. The stately bridge was occupied by a

throng of people, who swore that the men under whose rule the Loire had been choked with corpses should

have full personal experience of the nature of a noyade. In consequence of this news, the officers who had

charge of the criminals made such arrangements that the carriages reached Tours at two in the morning, and

drove straight to the posthouse. Fresh horses were instantly ordered; and the travellers started again at full

gallop. They had, in truth, not a moment to lose; for the alarm had been given; lights were seen in motion;

and the yells of a great multitude, disappointed of its revenge, mingled with the sound of the departing

At Poitiers there was another narrow escape. As the prisoners quitted the posthouse, they saw the whole

population pouring in fury down the steep declivity on which the city is built. They passed near Niort, but

could not venture to enter it. The inhabitants came forth with threatening aspect, and vehemently cried to the

postillions to stop; but the postillions urged the horses to full speed, and soon left the town behind. Through

Oleron was the place of their destination, a dreary island beaten by the raging waves of the Bay of Biscay.

The prisoners were confined in the castle; each had a single chamber, at the door of which a guard was

placed; and each was allowed the ration of a single soldier. They were not allowed to communicate either

with the garrison or with the population of the island; and soon after their arrival they were denied the

indulgence of walking on the ramparts. The only place where they were suffered to take exercise was the

They had not been long in this situation when news came that the Jacobins of Paris had made a last attempt to

regain ascendency in the state, that the hall of the Convention had been forced by a furious crowd, that one of

the deputies had been murdered and his head fixed on a pike, that the life of the President had been for a time

in imminent danger, and that some members of the legislature had not been ashamed to join the rioters. But

troops had arrived in time to prevent a massacre. The insurgents had been put to flight; the inhabitants of the

disaffected quarters of the capital had been disarmed; the guilty deputies had suffered the just punishment of

their treason; and the power of the Mountain was broken for ever. These events strengthened the aversion

with which the system of terror and the authors of that system were regarded. One member of the Convention

had moved that the three prisoners of Oleron should be put to death; another, that they should be brought

back to Paris, and tried by a council of war. These propositions were rejected. But something was conceded

to the party which called for severity. A vessel which had been fitted out with great expedition at Rochefort

touched at Oleron; and it was announced to Collot and Billaud that they must instantly go on board. They

were forthwith conveyed to Guiana, where Collot soon drank himself to death with brandy. Billaud lived

many years, shunning his fellowcreatures and shunned by them; and diverted his lonely hours by teaching

parrots to talk. Why a distinction was made between Barere and his companions in guilt, neither he nor any

other writer, as far as we know, has explained. It does not appear that the distinction was meant to be at all in

his favour; for orders soon arrived from Paris, that he should be brought to trial for his crimes before the

criminal court of the department of the Upper Charente. He was accordingly brought back to the continent,

and confined during some months at Saintes, in an old convent which had lately been turned into a jail.

While he lingered here, the reaction which had followed the great crisis of Thermidor met with a temporary

check. The friends of the House of Bourbon, presuming on the indulgence with which they had been treated

after the fall of Robespierre, not only ventured to avow their opinions with little disguise, but at length took

arms against the Convention, and were not put down till much blood had been shed in the streets of Paris.

The vigilance of the public authorities was therefore now directed chiefly against the Royalists; and the

rigour with which the Jacobins had lately been treated was somewhat relaxed. The Convention, indeed, again

resolved that Barere should be sent to Guiana. But this decree was not carried into effect. The prisoner,

probably with the connivance of some powerful persons, made his escape from Saintes and fled to Bordeaux,

where he remained in concealment during some years. There seems to have been a kind of understanding

between him and the government, that, as long as he hid himself, he should not be found, but that, if he

obtruded himself on the public eye, he must take the consequences of his rashness.

While the constitution of 1795, with its Executive Directory, its Council of Elders, and its Council of Five

Hundred, was in operation, he continued to live under the ban of the law. It was in vain that he solicited, even

at moments when the politics of the Mountain seemed to be again in the ascendant, a remission of the

sentence pronounced by the Convention. Even his fellow regicides, even the authors of the slaughter of

About eighteen months after his escape from prison, his name was again brought before the world. In his own

province he still retained some of his early popularity. He had, indeed, never been in that province since the

downfall of the monarchy. The mountaineers of Gascony were far removed from the seat of government, and

were but imperfectly informed of what passed there. They knew that their countryman had played an

important part, and that he had on some occasions promoted their local interests; and they stood by him in his

adversity and in his disgrace with a constancy which presents a singular contrast to his own abject fickleness.

All France was amazed to learn that the department of the Upper Pyrenees had chosen the proscribed tyrant a

member of the Council of Five Hundred. The council which, like our House of Commons, was the judge of

the election of its own members, refused to admit him. When his name was read from the roll, a cry of

indignation rose from the benches. "Which of you," exclaimed one of the members, "would sit by the side of

such a monster?" "Not I, not I!" answered a crowd of voices. One deputy declared that he would vacate his

seat if the hall were polluted by the presence of such a wretch. The election was declared null on the ground

that the person elected was a criminal skulking from justice; and many severe reflections were thrown on the

He tried to make his peace with the Directory, by writing a bulky libel on England, entitled, the Liberty of the

Seas. He seems to have confidently expected that this work would produce a great effect. He printed three

thousand copies, and in order to defray the expense of publication, sold one of his farms for the sum of ten

thousand francs. The book came out; but nobody bought it, in consequence, if Barere is to be believed, of the

villainy of Mr Pitt, who bribed the Directory to order the Reviewers not to notice so formidable an attack on

Barere had been about three years at Bordeaux when he received intelligence that the mob of the town

designed him the honour of a visit on the ninth of Thermidor, and would probably administer to him what he

had, in his defence of his friend Lebon, described as substantial justice under forms a little harsh. It was

necessary for him to disguise himself in clothes such as were worn by the carpenters of the dock. In this garb,

with a bundle of wood shavings under his arm, he made his escape into the vineyards which surrounded the

city, lurked during some days in a peasant's hut, and, when the dreaded anniversary was over, stole back into

the city. A few months later he was again in danger. He now thought that he should be nowhere so safe as in

the neighbourhood of Paris. He quitted Bordeaux, hastened undetected through those towns where four years

before his life had been in extreme danger, passed through the capital in the morning twilight, when none

were in the streets except shopboys taking down the shutters, and arrived safe at the pleasant village of St

Ouen on the Seine. Here he remained in seclusion during some months. In the meantime Bonaparte returned

from Egypt, placed himself at the had of a coalition of discontented parties, covered his designs with the

authority of the Elders, drove the Five Hundred out of their hall at the point of the bayonet, and became

Barere assures us that these events almost broke his heart; that he could not bear to see France again subject

to a master; and that if the representatives had been worthy of that honourable name, they would have

arrested the ambitious general who insulted them. These feelings, however, did not prevent him from

soliciting the protection of the new government, and from sending to the First Consul a handsome copy of the

The policy of Bonaparte was to cover all the past with a general oblivion. He belonged half to the Revolution

and half to the reaction. He was an upstart and a sovereign; and had therefore something in common with the

Jacobin, and something in common with the Royalist. All, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who were disposed

to support his government, were readily receivedall, whether Jacobins or Royalists, who showed hostility

to his government, were put down and punished. Men who had borne a part in the worst crimes of the Reign

of Terror, and men who had fought in the army of Conde, were to be found close together, both in his

antechambers and in his dungeons. He decorated Fouche and Maury with the same cross. He sent Arena and

Georges Cadoudal to the same scaffold. From a government acting on such principles Barere easily obtained

the indulgence which the Directory had constantly refused to grant. The sentence passed by the Convention

was remitted; and he was allowed to reside at Paris. His pardon, it is true, was not granted in the most

honourable form; and he remained, during some time, under the special supervision of the police. He

hastened, however, to pay his court at the Luxembourg palace, where Bonaparte then resided, and was

Here begins a new chapter of Barere's history. What passed between him and the Consular government

cannot, of course, be so accurately known to us as the speeches and reports which he made in the Convention.

It is, however, not difficult, from notorious facts, and from the admissions scattered over these lying

Memoirs, to form a tolerably accurate notion of what took place. Bonaparte wanted to buy Barere: Barere

wanted to sell himself to Bonaparte. The only question was one of price; and there was an immense interval

Bonaparte, whose vehemence of will, fixedness of purpose, and reliance on his own genius were not only

great but extravagant, looked with scorn on the most effeminate and dependent of human minds. He was

quite capable of perpetrating crimes under the influence either of ambition or of revenge: but he had no touch

of that accursed monomania, that craving for blood and tears, which raged in some of the Jacobin chiefs. To

proscribe the Terrorists would have been wholly inconsistent with his policy; but, of all the classes of men

whom his comprehensive system included, he liked them the least; and Barere was the worst of them. This

wretch had been branded with infamy, first by the Convention, and then by the Council of Five Hundred. The

inhabitants of four or five great cities had attempted to tear him limb from limb. Nor were his vices redeemed

by eminent talents for administration or legislation. It would be unwise to place in any honourable or

important post a man so wicked, so odious, and so little qualified to discharge high political duties. At the

same time there was a way in which it seemed likely that he might be of use to the government. The First

Consul, as he afterwards acknowledged, greatly overrated Barere's powers as a writer. The effect which the

Reports of the Committee of Public Safety had produced by the camp fires of the Republican armies had been

great. Napoleon himself, when a young soldier, had been delighted by those compositions, which had much

in common with the rhapsodies of his favourite poet, Macpherson. The taste, indeed, of the great warrior and

statesman was never very pure. His bulletins, his general orders, and his proclamations, are sometimes, it is

true, masterpieces in their kind; but we too often detect, even in his best writing, traces of Fingal, and of the

Carmagnoles. It is not strange, therefore, that he should have been desirous to secure the aid of Barere's pen.

Nor was this the only kind of assistance which the old member of the Committee of Public Safety might

render to the Consular government. He was likely to find admission into the gloomy dens in which those

Jacobins whose constancy was to be overcome by no reverse, or whose crimes admitted of no expiation, hid

themselves from the curses of mankind. No enterprise was too bold or too atrocious for minds crazed by

fanatacism, and familiar with misery and death. The government was anxious to have information of what

passed in their secret councils; and no man was better qualified to furnish such information than Barere.

For these reasons the First Consul was disposed to employ Barere as a writer and as a spy. But Barerewas

it possible that he would submit to such a degradation? Bad as he was, he had played a great part. He had

belonged to that class of criminals who filled the world with the renown of their crimes; he had been one of a

cabinet which had ruled France with absolute power, and made war on all Europe with signal success. Nay,

he had been, though not the most powerful, yet, with the single exception of Robespierre, the most

conspicuous member of that cabinet. His name had been a household word at Moscow and at Philadelphia, at

Edinburgh and at Cadiz. The blood of the Queen of France, the blood of the greatest orators and philosophers

of France, was on his hands. He had spoken; and it had been decreed that the plough should pass over the

great city of Lyons. He had spoken again; and it had been decreed that the streets of Toulon should be razed

to the ground. When depravity is placed so high as his, the hatred which it inspires is mingled with awe. His

place was with great tyrants, with Critias and Sylla, with Eccelino and Borgia; not with hireling scribblers

"Virtue, I grant you, is an empty boast; But shall the dignity of vice be lost?"

So sang Pope; and so felt Barere. When it was proposed to him to publish a journal in defence of the

Consular government, rage and shame inspired him for the first and last time with something like courage. He

had filled as large a space in the eyes of mankind as Mr Pitt or General Washington; and he was coolly

invited to descend at once to the level of Mr Lewis Goldsmith. He saw, too, with agonies of envy, that a wide

distinction was made between himself and the other statesmen of the Revolution who were summoned to the

aid of the government. Those statesmen were required, indeed, to make large sacrifices of principle; but they

were not called on to sacrifice what, in the opinion of the vulgar, constitutes personal dignity. They were

made tribunes and legislators, ambassadors and counsellors of state, ministers, senators, and consuls. They

might reasonably expect to rise with the rising fortunes of their master; and, in truth, many of them were

destined to wear the badge of his Legion of Honour and of his order of the Iron Crown; to be

archchancellors and arch treasurers, counts, dukes, and princes. Barere, only six years before, had been far

more powerful, far more widely renowned, than any of them; and now, while they were thought worthy to

represent the majesty of France at foreign courts, while they received crowds of suitors in gilded

antechambers, he was to pass his life in measuring paragraphs, and scolding correctors of the press. It was too

much. Those lips which had never before been able to fashion themselves to a No, now murmured

expostulation and refusal. "I could not"these are his own words"abase myself to such a point as to serve

the First Consul merely in the capacity of a journalist, while so many insignificant, low, and servile people,

such as the Treilhards, the Roederers, the Lebruns, the Marets, and others whom it is superfluous to name,

This outbreak of spirit was of short duration. Napoleon was inexorable. It is said indeed that he was, for a

moment, half inclined to admit Barere into the Council of State; but the members of that body remonstrated

in the strongest terms, and declared that such a nomination would be a disgrace to them all. This plan was

therefore relinquished. Thenceforth Barere's only chance of obtaining the patronage of the government was to

subdue his pride, to forget that there had been a time when, with three words, he might have had the heads of

the three consuls, and to betake himself, humbly and industriously, to the task of composing lampoons on

It has been often asserted, we know not on what grounds, that Barere was employed by the government not

only as a writer, but as a censor of the writings of other men. This imputation he vehemently denies in his

Memoirs; but our readers will probably agree with us in thinking that his denial leaves the question exactly

Thus much is certain, that he was not restrained from exercising the office of censor by any scruple of

conscience or honour; for he did accept an office, compared with which that of censor, odious as it is, may be

called an august and beneficent magistracy. He began to have what are delicately called relations with the

police. We are not sure that we have formed, or that we can convey, an exact notion of the nature of Barere's

new calling. It is a calling unknown in our country. It has indeed often happened in England that a plot has

been revealed to the government by one of the conspirators. The informer has sometimes been directed to

carry it fair towards his accomplices, and to let the evil design come to full maturity. As soon as his work is

done, he is generally snatched from the public gaze, and sent to some obscure village or to some remote

colony. The use of spies, even to this extent, is in the highest degree unpopular in England; but a political spy

by profession is a creature from which our island is as free as it is from wolves. In France the race is

wellknown, and was never more numerous, more greedy, more cunning, or more savage, than under the

Our idea of a gentleman in relations with the Consular and Imperial police may perhaps be incorrect. Such as

it is, we will try to convey it to our readers. We image to ourselves a well dressed person, with a soft voice

and affable manners. His opinions are those of the society in which he finds himself, but a little stronger. He

often complains, in the language of honest indignation, that what passes in private conversation finds its way

strangely to the government, and cautions his associates to take care what they say when they are not sure of

their company. As for himself, he owns that he is indiscreet. He can never refrain from speaking his mind;

In a gallery of the Palais Royal he overhears two friends talking earnestly about the King and the Count of

Artois. He follows them into a coffeehouse, sits at the table next to them, calls for his halfdish and his

small glass of cognac, takes up a journal, and seems occupied with the news. His neighbours go on talking

without restraint, and in the style of persons warmly attached to the exiled family. They depart; and he

follows them half round the boulevards till he fairly tracks them to their apartments, and learns their names

from the porters. From that day every letter addressed to either of them is sent from the postoffice to the

police, and opened. Their correspondents become known to the government, and are carefully watched. Six

or eight honest families, in different parts of France, find themselves at once under the frown of power

without being able to guess what offence they have given. One person is dismissed from a public office;

another learns with dismay that his promising son has been turned out of the Polytechnic school.

Next, the indefatigable servant of the state falls in with an old republican, who has not changed with the

times, who regrets the red cap and the tree of liberty, who has not unlearned the Thee and Thou, and who still

subscribes his letters with "Health and Fraternity." Into the ears of this sturdy politician our friend pours forth

a long series of complaints. What evil times! What a change since the days when the Mountain governed

France! What is the First Consul but a king under a new name? What is this Legion of Honour but a new

aristocracy? The old superstition is reviving with the old tyranny. There is a treaty with the Pope, and a

provision for the clergy. Emigrant nobles are returning in crowds, and are better received at the Tuileries than

the men of the 10th of August. This cannot last. What is life without liberty? What terrors has death to the

true patriot? The old Jacobin catches fire, bestows and receives the fraternal hug, and hints that there will

soon be great news, and that the breed of Harmodius and Brutus is not quite extinct. The next day he is close

To this vocation, a vocation compared with which the life of a beggar, of a pickpocket, of a pimp, is

honourable, did Barere now descend. It was his constant practice, as often as he enrolled himself in a new

party, to pay his footing with the heads of old friends. He was at first a Royalist; and he made atonement by

watering the tree of liberty with the blood of Louis. He was then a Girondist; and he made atonement by

murdering Vergniaud and Gensonne. He fawned on Robespierre up to the eighth of Thermidor; and he made

atonement by moving, on the ninth, that Robespierre should be beheaded without a trial. He was now enlisted

in the service of the new monarchy; and he proceeded to atone for his republican heresies by sending

Among his most intimate associates was a Gascon named Demerville, who had been employed in an office of

high trust under the Committee of Public Safety. This man was fanatically attached to the Jacobin system of

politics, and, in conjunction with other enthusiasts of the same class, formed a design against the First

Consul. A hint of this design escaped him in conversation with Barere. Barere carried the intelligence to

Lannes, who commanded the Consular Guards. Demerville was arrested, tried, and beheaded; and among the

The account which Barere has given of these transactions is studiously confused and grossly dishonest. We

think, however, that we can discern, through much falsehood and much artful obscurity, some truths which he

labours to conceal. It is clear to us that the government suspected him of what the Italians call a double

treason. It was natural that such a suspicion should attach to him. He had, in times not very remote, zealously

preached the Jacobin doctrine, that he who smites a tyrant deserves higher praise than he who saves a citizen.

Was it possible that the member of the Committee of Public Safety, the kingkiller, the queenkiller, could in

earnest mean to deliver his old confederates, his bosom friends, to the executioner, solely because they had

planned an act which, if there were any truth in his own Carmagnoles, was in the highest degree virtuous and

glorious? Was it not more probable that he was really concerned in the plot, and that the information which

he gave was merely intended to lull or to mislead the police? Accordingly, spies were set on the spy. He was

ordered to quit Paris, and not to come within twenty leagues till he received further orders. Nay, he ran no

He made his peace, however, with the government so far, that he was not only permitted, during some years,

to live unmolested, but was employed in the lowest sort of political drudgery. In the summer of 1803, while

he was preparing to visit the south of France, he received a letter which deserves to be inserted. It was from

Duroc, who is well known to have enjoyed a large share of Napoleon's confidence and favour.

"The First Consul, having been informed that Citizen Barere is about to set out for the country, desires that he

"Citizen Barere will every week draw up a report on the state of public opinion on the proceedings of the

government, and generally on everything which, in his judgment, it will be interesting to the First Consul to

"He will deliver his reports under seal into General Duroc's own hand, and General Duroc will deliver them

to the First Consul. But it is absolutely necessary that nobody should suspect that this species of

communication takes place; and, should any such suspicion get abroad, the First Consul will cease to receive

"It will also be proper that Citizen Barere should frequently insert in the journals articles tending to animate

During some years Barere continued to discharge the functions assigned to him by his master. Secret reports,

filled with the talk of coffeehouses, were carried by him every week to the Tuileries. His friends assure us

that he took especial pains to do all the harm in his power to the returned emigrants. It was not his fault if

Napoleon was not apprised of every murmur and every sarcasm which old marquesses who had lost their

estates, and old clergymen who had lost their benefices, uttered against the imperial system. M. Hippolyte

Carnot, we grieve to say, is so much blinded by party spirit that he seems to reckon this dirty wickedness

Barere was, at the same time, an indefatigable journalist and pamphleteer. He set up a paper directed against

England, and called the "Memorial Antibritannique". He planned a work entitled, "France made great and

illustrious by Napoleon." When the Imperial government was established, the old regicide made himself

conspicuous even among the crowd of flatterers by the peculiar fulsomeness of his adulation. He translated

into French a contemptible volume of Italian verses, entitled, "The Poetic Crown, composed on the glorious

accession of Napoleon the First, by the Shepherds of Arcadia." He commenced a new series of Carmagnoles

very different from those which had charmed the Mountain. The title of Emperor of the French, he said, was

mean; Napoleon ought to be Emperor of Europe. King of Italy was too humble an appellation; Napoleon's

But Barere laboured to small purpose in both his vocations. Neither as a writer nor as a spy was he of much

use. He complains bitterly that his paper did not sell. While the "Journal des Debats", then flourishing under

the able management of Geoffroy, had a circulation of at least twenty thousand copies, the "Memorial

Antibritannique" never, in its most prosperous times, had more than fifteen hundred subscribers; and these

subscribers were, with scarcely an exception, persons residing far from Paris, probably Gascons, among

A writer who cannot find readers generally attributes the public neglect to any cause rather than to the true

one; and Barere was no exception to the general rule. His old hatred to Paris revived in all its fury. That city,

he says, has no sympathy with France. No Parisian cares to subscribe to a journal which dwells on the real

wants and interests of the country. To a Parisian nothing is so ridiculous as patriotism. The higher classes of

the capital have always been devoted to England. A corporal from London is better received among them

than a French general. A journal, therefore, which attacks England has no chance of their support.

A much better explanation of the failure of the "Memorial" was given by Bonaparte at St Helena. "Barere,"

said he to Barry O'Meara, "had the reputation of being a man of talent: but I did not find him so. I employed

him to write; but he did not display ability. He used many flowers of rhetoric, but no solid argument; nothing

The truth is that, though Barere was a man of quick parts, and could do with ease what he could do at all, he

had never been a good writer. In the day of his power he had been in the habit of haranguing an excitable

audience on exciting topics. The faults of his style passed uncensured; for it was a time of literary as well as

of civil lawlessness, and a patriot was licensed to violate the ordinary rules of composition as well as the

ordinary rules of jurisprudence and of social morality. But there had now been a literary as well as a civil

reaction. As there was again a throne and a court, a magistracy, a chivalry, and a hierarchy, so was there a

revival of classical taste. Honour was again paid to the prose of Pascal and Massillon, and to the verse of

Racine and La Fontaine. The oratory which had delighted the galleries of the Convention was not only as

much out of date as the language of Villehardouin and Joinville, but was associated in the public mind with

images of horror. All the peculiarities of the Anacreon of the guillotine, his words unknown to the Dictionary

of the Academy, his conceits and his jokes, his Gascon idioms and his Gascon hyperboles, had become as

Bonaparte, who had never loved the men of the Reign of Terror, had now ceased to fear them. He was

allpowerful and at the height of glory; they were weak and universally abhorred. He was a sovereign; and it

is probable that he already meditated a matrimonial alliance with sovereigns. He was naturally unwilling, in

his new position, to hold any intercourse with the worst class of Jacobins. Had Barere's literary assistance

been important to the government, personal aversion might have yielded to considerations of policy; but there

was no motive for keeping terms with a worthless man who had also proved a worthless writer. Bonaparte,

therefore, gave loose to his feelings. Barere was not gently dropped, not sent into an honourable retirement,

but spurned and scourged away like a troublesome dog. He had been in the habit of sending six copies of his

journal on fine paper daily to the Tuileries. Instead of receiving the thanks and praises which he expected, he

was drily told that the great man had ordered five copies to be sent back. Still he toiled on; still he cherished a

hope that at last Napoleon would relent, and that at last some share in the honours of the state would reward

so much assiduity and so much obsequiousness. He was bitterly undeceived. Under the Imperial constitution

the electoral colleges of the departments did not possess the right of choosing senators or deputies, but merely

that of presenting candidates. From among these candidates the emperor named members of the senate, and

the senate named members of the legislative body. The inhabitants of the Upper Pyrenees were still strangely

partial to Barere. In the year 1805, they were disposed to present him as a candidate for the senate. On this

Napoleon expressed the highest displeasure; and the president of the electoral college was directed to tell the

voters, in plain terms, that such a choice would be disgraceful to the department. All thought of naming

Barere a candidate for the senate was consequently dropped. But the people of Argeles ventured to name him

a candidate for the legislative body. That body was altogether destitute of weight and dignity; it was not

permitted to debate; its only function was to vote in silence for whatever the government proposed. It is not

easy to understand how any man who had sat in free and powerful deliberative assemblies could condescend

to bear a part in such a mummery. Barere, however, was desirous of a place even in this mock legislature; and

a place even in this mock legislature was refused to him. In the whole senate he had not a single vote.

Such treatment was sufficient, it might have been thought, to move the most abject of mankind to resentment.

Still, however, Barere cringed and fawned on. His letters came weekly to the Tuileries till the year 1807. At

length, while he was actually writing the two hundred and twentythird of the series, a note was put into his

hands. It was from Duroc, and was much more perspicuous than polite. Barere was requested to send no more

Contempt, says the Indian proverb, pierces even the shell of the tortoise; and the contempt of the Court was

felt to the quick even by the callous heart of Barere. He had humbled himself to the dust; and he had humbled

himself in vain. Having been eminent among the rulers of a great and victorious state, he had stooped to serve

a master in the vilest capacities; and he had been told that, even in those capacities, he was not worthy of the

pittance which had been disdainfully flung to him. He was now degraded below the level even of the

hirelings whom the government employed in the most infamous offices. He stood idle in the marketplace,

not because he thought any office too infamous, but because none would hire him.

Yet he had reason to think himself fortunate; for, had all that is avowed in these Memoirs been known, he

would have received very different tokens of the Imperial displeasure. We learn from himself that, while

publishing daily columns of flattery on Bonaparte, and while carrying weekly budgets of calumny to the

Tuileries, he was in close connection with the agents whom the Emperor Alexander, then by no means

favourably disposed towards France, employed to watch all that passed at Paris; was permitted to read their

secret despatches; was consulted by them as to the temper of the public mind and the character of Napoleon;

and did his best to persuade them that the government was in a tottering condition, and that the new sovereign

was not, as the world supposed, a great statesman and soldier. Next, Barere, still the flatterer and talebearer of

the Imperial Court, connected himself in the same manner with the Spanish envoy. He owns that with that

envoy he had relations which he took the greatest pains to conceal from his own government; that they met

twice a day; and that their conversation chiefly turned on the vices of Napoleon; on his designs against Spain,

and on the best mode of rendering those designs abortive. In truth, Barere's baseness was unfathomable. In

the lowest deeps of shame he found out lower deeps. It is bad to be a sycophant; it is bad to be a spy. But

even among sycophants and spies there are degrees of meanness. The vilest sycophant is he who privily

slanders the master on whom he fawns; and the vilest spy is he who serves foreigners against the government

From 1807 to 1814 Barere lived in obscurity, railing as bitterly as his craven cowardice would permit against

the Imperial administration, and coming sometimes unpleasantly across the police. When the Bourbons

returned, he, as might have been expected, became a royalist, and wrote a pamphlet setting forth the horrors

of the system from which the Restoration had delivered France, and magnifying the wisdom and goodness

which had dictated the charter. He who had voted for the death of Louis, he who had moved the decree for

the trial of Marie Antoinette, he whose hatred of monarchy had led him to make war even upon the

sepulchres of ancient monarchs, assures us, with great complacency, that "in this work monarchical principles

and attachment to the House of Bourbon are nobly expressed." By this apostasy he got nothing, not even any

During the hundred days he again emerged for a very short time into public life; he was chosen by his native

district a member of the Chamber of Representatives. But, though that assembly was composed in a great

measure of men who regarded the excesses of the Jacobins with indulgence, he found himself an object of

general aversion. When the President first informed the Chamber that M. Barere requested a hearing, a deep

and indignant murmur ran round the benches. After the battle of Waterloo, Barere proposed that the Chamber

should save France from the victorious enemy, by putting forth a proclamation about the pass of

Thermopylae and the Lacedaemonian custom of wearing flowers in times of extreme danger. Whether this

composition, if it had then appeared, would have stopped the English and Prussian armies, is a question

respecting which we are left to conjecture. The Chamber refused to adopt this last of the Carmagnoles.

The Emperor had abdicated. The Bourbons returned. The Chamber of Representatives, after burlesquing

during a few weeks the proceedings of the National Convention, retired with the well earned character of

having been the silliest political assembly that had met in France. Those dreaming pedants and praters never

for a moment comprehended their position. They could never understand that Europe must be either

conciliated or vanquished; that Europe could be conciliated only by the restoration of Louis, and vanquished

only by means of a dictatorial power entrusted to Napoleon. They would not hear of Louis; yet they would

not hear of the only measures which could keep him out. They incurred the enmity of all foreign powers by

putting Napoleon at their head; yet they shackled him, thwarted him, quarrelled with him about every trifle,

abandoned him on the first reverse. They then opposed declamations and disquisitions to eight hundred

thousand bayonets; played at making a constitution for their country, when it depended on the indulgence of

the victor whether they should have a country; and were at last interrupted, in the midst of their babble about

the rights of man and the sovereignty of the people, by the soldiers of Wellington and Blucher.

A new Chamber of Deputies was elected, so bitterly hostile to the Revolution that there was no small risk of a

new Reign of Terror. It is just, however, to say that the king, his ministers, and his allies exerted themselves

to restrain the violence of the fanatical royalists, and that the punishments inflicted, though in our opinion

unjustifiable, were few and lenient when compared with those which were demanded by M. de

Labourdonnaye and M. Hyde de Neuville. We have always heard, and are inclined to believe, that the

government was not disposed to treat even the regicides with severity. But on this point the feeling of the

Chamber of Deputies was so strong that it was thought necessary to make some concession. It was enacted,

therefore, that whoever, having voted in January 1793 for the death of Louis the Sixteenth, had in any manner

given in an adhesion to the government of Bonaparte during the hundred days should be banished for life

from France. Barere fell within this description. He had voted for the death of Louis; and he had sat in the

He accordingly retired to Belgium, and resided there, forgotten by all mankind, till the year 1830. After the

revolution of July he was at liberty to return to France; and he fixed his residence in his native province. But

he was soon involved in a succession of lawsuits with his nearest relations"three fatal sisters and an

ungrateful brother," to use his own words. Who was in the right is a question about which we have no means

of judging, and certainly shall not take Barere's word. The Courts appear to have decided some points in his

favour and some against him. The natural inference is, that there were faults on all sides. The result of this

litigation was that the old man was reduced to extreme poverty, and was forced to sell his paternal house.

As far as we can judge from the few facts which remain to be mentioned, Barere continued Barere to the last.

After his exile he turned Jacobin again, and, when he came back to France, joined the party of the extreme

left in railing at Louis Philippe, and at all Louis Philippe's ministers. M. Casimir Perier, M. De Broglie, M.

Guizot, and M. Thiers, in particular, are honoured with his abuse; and the King himself is held up to

execration as a hypocritical tyrant. Nevertheless, Barere had no scruple about accepting a charitable donation

of a thousand francs a year from the privy purse of the sovereign whom he hated and reviled. This pension,

together with some small sums occasionally doled out to him by the department of the Interior, on the ground

that he was a distressed man of letters, and by the department of Justice, on the ground that he had formerly

held a high judicial office, saved him from the necessity of begging his bread. Having survived all his

colleagues of the renowned Committee of Public Safety, and almost all his colleagues of the Convention, he

We have now laid before our readers what we believe to be a just account of this man's life. Can it be

necessary for us to add anything for the purpose of assisting their judgment of his character? If we were

writing about any of his colleagues in the Committee of Public Safety, about Carnot, about Robespierre, or

Saint Just, nay, even about Couthon, Collot, or Billaud, we might feel it necessary to go into a full

examination of the arguments which have been employed to vindicate or to excuse the system of Terror. We

could, we think, show that France was saved from her foreign enemies, not by the system of Terror, but in

spite of it; and that the perils which were made the plea of the violent policy of the Mountain were to a great

extent created by that very policy. We could, we think, also show that the evils produced by the Jacobin

administration did not terminate when it fell; that it bequeathed a long series of calamities to France and to

Europe; that public opinion, which had during two generations been constantly becoming more and more

favourable to civil and religious freedom, underwent, during the days of Terror, a change of which the traces

are still to be distinctly perceived. It was natural that there should be such a change, when men saw that those

who called themselves the champions of popular rights had compressed into the space of twelve months more

crimes than the Kings of France, Merovingian, Carlovingian, and Capetian, had perpetrated in twelve

centuries. Freedom was regarded as a great delusion. Men were willing to submit to the government of

hereditary princes, of fortunate soldiers, of nobles, of priests; to any government but that of philosophers and

philanthropists. Hence the imperial despotism, with its enslaved press and its silent tribune, its dungeons

stronger than the old Bastile, and its tribunals more obsequious than the old parliaments. Hence the

restoration of the Bourbons and of the Jesuits, the Chamber of 1815 with its categories of proscription, the

revival of the feudal spirit, the encroachments of the clergy, the persecution of the Protestants, the appearance

of a new breed of De Montforts and Dominics in the full light of the nineteenth century. Hence the admission

of France into the Holy Alliance, and the war waged by the old soldiers of the tricolor against the liberties of

Spain. Hence, too, the apprehensions with which, even at the present day, the most temperate plans for

widening the narrow basis of the French representation are regarded by those who are especially interested in

the security of property and maintenance of order. Half a century has not sufficed to obliterate the stain which

Nothing is more ridiculous than the manner in which writers like M. Hippolyte Carnot defend or excuse the

Jacobin administration, while they declaim against the reaction which followed. That the reaction has

produced and is still producing much evil, is perfectly true. But what produced the reaction? The spring flies

up with a force proportioned to that with which it has been pressed down. The pendulum which is drawn far

in one direction swings as far in the other. The joyous madness of intoxication in the evening is followed by

languor and nausea on the morrow. And so, in politics, it is the sure law that every excess shall generate its

opposite; nor does he deserve the name of a statesman who strikes a great blow without fully calculating the

effect of the rebound. But such calculation was infinitely beyond the reach of the authors of the Reign of

Terror. Violence, and more violence, blood, and more blood, made up their whole policy. In a few months

these poor creatures succeeded in bringing about a reaction, of which none of them saw, and of which none of

us may see the close; and, having brought it about, they marvelled at it; they bewailed it; they execrated it;

they ascribed it to everything but the real causetheir own immortality and their own profound incapacity

These, however, are considerations to which, on the present occasion, it is hardly necessary for us to advert;

for, be the defence which has been set up for the Jacobin policy good or bad, it is a defence which cannot

avail Barere. From his own life, from his own pen, from his own mouth, we can prove that the part which he

took in the work of blood is to be attributed, not even to sincere fanaticism, not even to misdirected and

illregulated patriotism, but either to cowardice, or to delight in human misery. Will it be pretended that it

was from public spirit that he murdered the Girondists? In these very Memoirs he tells us that he always

regarded their death as the greatest calamity that could befall France. Will it be pretended that it was from

public spirit that he raved for the head of the Austrian woman? In these very Memoirs he tells us that the time

spent in attacking her was ill spent, and ought to have been employed in concerting measures of national

defence. Will it be pretended that he was induced by sincere and earnest abhorrence of kingly government to

butcher the living and to outrage the dead; he who invited Napoleon to take the title of King of Kings, he who

assures us that after the Restoration he expressed in noble language his attachment to monarchy, and to the

house of Bourbon? Had he been less mean, something might have been said in extenuation of his cruelty.

Had he been less cruel, something might have been said in extenuation of his meanness. But for him, regicide

and courtspy, for him who patronised Lebon and betrayed Demerville, for him who wantoned alternately in

gasconades of Jacobinism and gasconades of servility, what excuse has the largest charity to offer?

We cannot conclude without saying something about two parts of his character, which his biographer appears

to consider as deserving of high admiration. Barere, it is admitted, was somewhat fickle; but in two things he

was consistent, in his love of Christianity, and in his hatred to England. If this were so, we must say that

It is possible that our inclinations may bias our judgment; but we think that we do not flatter ourselves when

we say that Barere's aversion to our country was a sentiment as deep and constant as his mind was capable of

entertaining. The value of this compliment is indeed somewhat diminished by the circumstance that he knew

very little about us. His ignorance of our institutions, manners, and history is the less excusable, because,

according to his own account, he consorted much, during the peace of Amiens, with Englishmen of note, such

as that eminent nobleman Lord Greaten, and that not less eminent philosopher Mr Mackensie Coefhis. In

spite, however, of his connection with these wellknown ornaments of our country, he was so illinformed

about us as to fancy that our government was always laying plans to torment him. If he was hooted at Saintes,

probably by people whose relations he had murdered, it was because the cabinet of St James's had hired the

mob. If nobody would read his bad books it was because the cabinet of St James's had secured the Reviewers.

His accounts of Mr Fox, of Mr Pitt, of the Duke of Wellington, of Mr Canning, swarm with blunders

surpassing even the ordinary blunders committed by Frenchmen who write about England. Mr Fox and Mr

Pitt, he tells us, were ministers in two different reigns. Mr Pitt's sinking fund was instituted in order to enable

England to pay subsidies to the powers allied against the French republic. The Duke of Wellington's house in

Hyde Park was built by the nation, which twice voted the sum of 200,000 pounds for the purpose. This,

however, is exclusive of the cost of the frescoes, which were also paid for out of the public purse. Mr

Canning was the first Englishman whose death Europe had reason to lament; for the death of Lord Ward, a

relation, we presume, of Lord Greaten and Mr Coefhis, had been an immense benefit to mankind.

Ignorant, however, as Barere was, he knew enough of us to hate us; and we persuade ourselves that, had he

known us better, he would have hated us more. The nation which has combined, beyond all example and all

hope, the blessings of liberty with those of order, might well be an object of aversion to one who had been

false alike to the cause of order and to the cause of liberty. We have had amongst us intemperate zeal for

popular rights; we have had amongst us also the intemperance of loyalty. But we have never been shocked by

such a spectacle as the Barere of 1794, or as the Barere of 1804. Compared with him, our fiercest

demagogues have been gentle; compared with him, our meanest courtiers have been manly. Mix together

Thistlewood and Bubb Doddington; and you are still far from having Barere. The antipathy between him and

us is such, that neither for the crimes of his earlier nor for those of his later life does our language, rich as it

is, furnish us with adequate names. We have found it difficult to relate his history without having perpetual

recourse to the French vocabulary of horror, and to the French vocabulary of baseness. It is not easy to give a

notion of his conduct in the Convention, without using those emphatic terms, guillotinade, noyade, fusillade,

mitraillade. It is not easy to give a notion of his conduct under the Consulate and the Empire without

We therefore like his invectives against us much better than anything else that he has written; and dwell on

them, not merely with complacency, but with a feeling akin to gratitude. It was but little that he could do to

promote the honour of our country; but that little he did strenuously and constantly. Renegade, traitor, slave,

coward, liar, slanderer, murderer, hack writer, policespythe one small service which he could render to

We cannot say that we contemplate with equal satisfaction that fervent and constant zeal for religion which,

according to M. Hippolyte Carnot, distinguished Barere; for, as we think that whatever brings dishonour on

religion is a serious evil, we had, we own, indulged a hope that Barere was an atheist. We now learn,

however, that he was at no time even a sceptic, that he adhered to his faith through the whole Revolution, and

that he has left several manuscript works on divinity. One of these is a pious treatise, entitled "Of

Christianity, and of its Influence." Another consists of meditations on the Psalms, which will doubtless

This makes the character complete. Whatsoever things are false, whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever

things are unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are hateful, whatsoever things are of evil

report, if there be any vice, and if there be any infamy, all these things, we knew, were blended in Barere. But

one thing was still wanting; and that M. Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When to such an assemblage of

qualities a high profession of piety is added, the effect becomes overpowering. We sink under the

contemplation of such exquisite and manifold perfection; and feel, with deep humility, how presumptuous it

was in us to think of composing the legend of this beatified athlete of the faith, St Bertrand of the

Something more we had to say about him. But let him go. We did not seek him out, and will not keep him

longer. If those who call themselves his friends had not forced him on our notice we should never have

vouchsafed to him more than a passing word of scorn and abhorrence, such as we might fling at his brethren,

Hebert and Fouquier Tinville, and Carrier and Lebon. We have no pleasure in seeing human nature thus

degraded. We turn with disgust from the filthy and spiteful Yahoos of the fiction; and the filthiest and most

spiteful Yahoo of the fiction was a noble creature when compared with the Barere of history. But what is no

pleasure M. Hippolyte Carnot has made a duty. It is no light thing that a man in high and honourable public

trust, a man who, from his connections and position, may not unnaturally be supposed to speak the sentiments

of a large class of his countrymen, should come forward to demand approbation for a life black with every

sort of wickedness, and unredeemed by a single virtue. This M. Hippolyte Carnot has done. By attempting to

enshrine this Jacobin carrion, he has forced us to gibbet it; and we venture to say that, from the eminence of

2. The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Volume II., page = 4

4. MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS OF LORD MACAULAY. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE EDINBURGH REVIEW., page = 4