And if the gods care not for you, To win some mortal's feeble heart? Than these blue waves that kiss the shore. O brooder on the hills of heaven, WILLIAM MORRIS. their spirit. Power vegetates with more vigor after these gentle prunings. A slender reform amuses and lulle the people: the popular enthusiasm subsides; and the moment of effectual reform is irretrievably lost. No important political improvement was ever obtained in a period of tranquillity The corrupt interest of the governors is so strong, and the cry of the people so feeble, that it were vain to expect it. If the effer vescence of the popular mind is suffered to pass away without effect, it would be absurd to expect from languor what enthusiasm had not obtained. If radical reform is not, at such a moment, procured, all partial changes are evaded and defeated in the tranquillity which succeeds. The gradual reform that arises from the presiding principle exhibited in the specious theory of Mr. Burke, is belied by the experience of all ages. Whatever excellence, whatever freedom is discoverable in governments, has been infused into them by the shock of a revolution; and their sub DEFENCE OF THE FRENCH REVO- sequent progress has been only the accu LUTION. [SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH, (1765-1832) distinguished as mulation of abuse. It is hence that the most enlightened politicians have recognized the necessity of frequently recalling their a statesman, historian, and political and philosophical first principles;-a truth equally suggested writer, was a powerful advocate of liberal principles. His chief works are " Vindicis Gallicæ," a defence of the French Revolution against the accusations of Edmund Burke (1791), "A Dissertation on Ethical Philosophy," (1830), "A History of England, and of the Revolution of 1688," and numerous essays in the Edinburgh Review.] The three Aristocracies-Military, Sacerdotal, and Judicial-may be considered as having formed the French Government. They have appeared, so far as we have considered them, incorrigible. All attempts to improve them would have been little better than (to use the words of Mr. Burke)“. mean reparations on mighty ruins." They were not perverted by the accidental depravity of their numbers; they were not infected by any transient passion, which new circumstances would extirpate; the fault was in the essence of the institutions themselves, which were irreconcileable with a free gov ernment. But, it is objected, these institutions might have been gradually reformed; the spirit of freedom would have silently entered; the progressive wisdom of an enlightened nation would have remedied in process of time, their defects, without convulsions. To this argument I confidently answer that these institutions would have destroyed Liberty, before Liberty had corrected. to the penetrating intellect of Machiavel, by his experience of the Florentine democracy, and by his research into the history of ancient commonwealths. Whatever is good ought to be pursued at the moment it is attainable. The public voice, irresistible in a period of convulsion, is contemned with impunity, when spoken during the lethargy into which nations are lulled by the tranquil course of their ordinary affairs. The ardour of reform languishes in unsupported tediousness it perishes in an impotent struggle with adversaries, who receive new strength with the progress of the day. No hope of great political improvement-let us repeat it-is to be entertained from tranquillity for its natural operation is to strengthen all those who are interested in perpetuating abuse. The National Assembly seized the moment of eradicating the corruptions and abuses which afflicted their country. Their reform was total, that it might be commensurate with the evil: and no part of it was delayed, because to spare an abuse at such a period was to consecrate it; and as the enthusiasm which carries nations to such enterprizes is short-lived, so the opportunity of reform, if once neglected, might be irre vocably fled. But let us ascend to more general princi ples, and hazard bolder opinions. Let us rience, man is degraded to the unimproveagrant that the state of France was not so ble level of the instinctive animals. But desperately incorrigible. Let us suppose in the second acceptation, an artist is said that changes far more gentle-innovations to be guided by experience, when the infar less extensive, would have remedied spection of a machine discovers to him the grosser evils of her government, and principles which teach him to improve it; placed it almost on a level with free and or when the comparison of many, both with celebrated constitutions. These conces respect to their excellences and defects, sions, though too large for truth, will not enables him to frame one different from convict the Assembly. By what principle any he had examined, and still more per of reason or of justice, were they precluded fect. In this latter sense the National A from aspiring to give France a government sembly have perpetually availed themselves less imperfect than accident had formed in of experience. History is an immense col other states? Who will be hardy enough lection of experiments on the nature and to assert, that a better constitution is not effect of the various parts of various gov. attainable than any which has hitherto ap- ernments. Some institutions are experi peared? Is the limit of human wisdom to mentally ascertained to be beneficial; some be estimated in the science of politics to be most indubitably destructive; a third alone, by the extent of its present attain class, which produces partial good, obments? Is the most sublime and difficult viously possesses the capacity of improve. of all arts, the improvement of the social ment. What, on such a survey, was the order, the alleviation of the miseries of the civil condition of man,-to be alone stationary, amid the rapid progress of every other-liberal and vulgar-to perfection? Where would be the atrocious guilt of a grand experiment, to ascertain the portion of freedom and happiness that can be created by political institutions? dictate of enlightened experience? Not surely to follow any model in which these institutions lay indiscriminately mingled; but, like the mechanic, to compare and generalize, and guided equally by expe rience, to imitate and reject. The process is in both cases the same; the rights and the nature of man are to the legislator what the general properties of matter are to the mechanic, the first guide, because they are founded on the widest experience. In the second class are to be ranked observations on the excellences and defects of all governments which have already existed, that the construction of a more perfect ma chine may result. But experience is the basis of all:-not the puny and trammelled experience of a statesman by trade, who trembles at any change in the tricks which he has been taught, or the routine in which he has been accustomed to move; but an experience liberal and enlightened, which hears the testimony of ages and nations, and collects from it the general principles which regulate the mechanism of society. That guilt (if it be guilt) is imputable to the National Assembly. They are accused of having rejected the guidance of experience, of having abandoned themselves to the illusion of theory, and of having sacrificed great and attainable good to the magnificent chimeras of ideal excellence. If this accusation be just,-if they have indeed abandoned experience, the basis of human knowledge, as well as the guide of human action, their conduct deserves no longer any serious argument: but if (as Mr. Burke more than once insinuates) their contempt of it is avowed and ostentatious, it was surely unworthy of him to have expended so much genius against so preposterous an insanity. But the explanation of terms will diminish our wonder. Expe* * We are boldly challenged to pro rience may, both in the arts and in the duce our proofs; our complaints are as conduct of human life be regarded in a serted to be chimerical; and the excellence double view, either as furnishing models or of our government is inferred from its principles. An artist who frames his ma- beneficial effects. Most unfortunately for chine in exact imitation of his predecessor us, most unfortunately for our country, is in the first sense said to be guided by ex- these proofs are too ready and too numer perience. In this sense all improvements ous. We find them in that "monumental of human life have been deviations from debt," the bequest of wasteful and profliexperience. The first visionary innovator gate wars, which already wrings from the was the savage who built a cabin, or cov- peasant something of his hard-earned pit. ered himself with a rug. If this be expe-tance,-which already has punished the in dustry of the useful and upright manufacturer, by robbing him of the asylum of his house, and the judgment of his peers, to which the madness of political Quixotism adds a million for every farthing that the pomp of ministerial empiricism pays, and which menaces our children with convulsions and calamities, of which no age has seen the parallel. We find them in the black and bloody roll of persecuting statutes that are still suffered to stain our code-a list so execrable, that were no monument to be preserved of what England was in the eighteenth century but her Statute Book, she might be deemed to have been then still plunged in the deepest gloom of superstitious barbarism. We find them in the ignominious exclusion of great bodies of our fellow-citizens from political trusts, by tests which reward falsehood and punish probity, which profane the rights of the religion they pretend to guard, and usurp the dominion of the God they profess to revere. We find them in the growing corruption of those who administer the government, in the venality of a House of Commons, which has become only a cumbrous and expensive chamber for registering ministerial edicts, in the increase of a nobility degraded by the profusion and prostitution of honours, which the zealous partisans of democracy would have spared them. We find them, above all, in the rapid progress which has been made in silencing the great organ of public opinion,that Press which is the true control over the Ministers and Parliaments, who might else, with impunity, trample on the impotent formalities that form the pretended bulwark of our freedom. The mutual control, the well-poised balance of the several members of our Legislature, are the visions of theoretical, or the pretext of practical politicians. It is a government, not of check, but of conspiracy,-a conspiracy which can only be repressed by the energy of popular opinion. These are no visionary ills,-no chimerical apprehensions: they are the sad and sober reflections of as honest and enlightened men as any in the kingdom. Nor are they alle viated by the torpid and listless security into which the people seem to be lulled. "Summum otium forense non quiescentis sed senescentis civitatis." It is in this fatal temper that men become sufficiently debased and embruted to sink into placid and polluted servitude. It is then that it may most truly be said, that the mind of a country is slain. The admirers of Revolution principies naturally call on every aggrieved and enlightened citizen to consider the source of his oppression. If penal statutes hang over our Catholic brethren,-if Test Acts outrage our Protestant fellow-citizens,-if the remains of feudal tyranny are still suffered to exist in Scotland, if the press is fettered,if our right to trial by jury is abridged,— if our manufactures are proscribed and hunted down by excise, the reason of all these oppressions is the same :-no branch of the Legislature represents the people. Men are oppressed because they have no share in their own government. Let all these classes of oppressed citizens melt their local and partial grievances into one great mass. Let them cease to be suppliants for their rights, or to sue for them like mendicants, as a precarious boon from the arrogant pity of usurpers. Until the Legislature speaks their voice it will oppress them. Let them unite to procure such a Reform in the representation of the people as will make the House of Commons their representative. If dismissing all petty views of obtaining their own particular ends, they unite for this great object, they must succeed. The cooperating efforts of so many bodies of citizens must awaken the nation; and its voice will be spoken in a tone that virtuous governors will obey, and tyrannical ones must dread. This tranquil and legal Reform is the ultimate object of those whom Mr. Burke has so foully branded. In effect this would be amply sufficient. The powers of the King and the Lords have never been formidable in England, but from discords between the House of Commons and its pretended constituents. Were that house really to become the vehicle of the popular voice, the privi leges of other bodies, in opposition to the sense of the people and their representatives would be but as dust in the balance. From this radical improvement all subaltern re form would naturally and peaceably arise. We dream of no more, and in claiming this, instead of meriting the imputation of being apostles of sedition, we conceive ourselves entitled to be considered as the most sincere friends of tranquil and stable government. We desire to avert revolution by reform,~ subversion by correction. We admonish our governors to reform, while they retain the force to reform with dignity and security; and we conjure them not to wait the moment, which will infallibly arrive, when they shall be obliged to supplicate that people, whom they oppress and despise, for the slenderest pittance of their present powers. The grievances of England do not now, we confess, justify a change by violence: but they are in a rapid progress to that fatal state, in which they will both justify and produce it. It is because we sincerely love tranquil freedom, that we earnestly deprecate the arrival of the moment when nature and honour shall compel us to seek her with our swords. Are not they the true friends to authority who desire, that whatever is granted by it "should issue as a gift of her bounty and beneficence, rather than as claims recovered against a struggling litigant? Or, at least, that if her beneficence obtained no credit in her concessions, they should appear the salutary provisions of wisdom and foresight, not as things wrung with blood by the cruel gripe of a rigid necessity." We desire that the political light which is to break in on England should be "through well-contrived and well-disposed windows, not through flaws and breaches, through the yawning chasms of our ruin." SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH. THE CONSTANT PRINCE. [PEDRO CALDERon de la BarcA, a great Spanish dramatist, born in Madrid in 1600, died in 1681. Educated by the College of Jesuits, he became a soldier, but having evinced a high literary faculty, he was appointed to superintend the royal theatres in 1635, on the death of Lope de Vega. His voluminous writings comprise no less than eighty-five sacred dramas, besides over one hundred secular plays, including tragedies, comedies, and melodramas. There is much lyrical fire and plenty of extravagance in these admired productions, in many of which the passions form the groundwork of the plot. By some critics Calderon is placed in a very high niche next to Shakespeare as a dramatic poet.] Phenix. If I but knew, Ah! my Zelmia, how I feel, But what I feel I do not know, The sweet illusions mock me so. VOL. III. Zara. Since these gardens cannot steal Rosa, And when the golden splendours run Ah! no more can gladden me When, alike in charms and powers, Back returns, and makes the waving All its realm, and to subdue FROM THE PURGATORY OF ST. PATRICK. BY CALDERON. Polonia. Let me go, my lord, since thou Knowest how my heart doth leap and bound When I hear a trumpet's sound, And a flush comes deepening o'er my brow, 60 Polonia. This fickle Babylon that trien In its thirsty rage to seek Even the dark and distant skies. Now the God by rage possess'd Has loosed the winds and let them fly, Raging over sea and sky; Rushing o'er the waters dark, They have struck the wretched barkShe whose trumpet late did sound Like a swan's funereal noteI, who then a pathway found Up that steep stupendous cliff, Which upon the shore remote, First receives the orient ray, There I saw a mighty ship Tossing like a summer skiff On the waters cast away, As the masts did rise and dip, Saw I Philip's banners wave O'er the sinking vessel's grave; Then I added more and more, To the waves and tempest's roar, By the gushing tears and sighs Bursting from my lips and eyes!— King. Immortal rulers of the sky Why so much my patience try |