men. Italy has just buried its great political philosopher, Gioberti; America, its orator and statesman, Webster; England, its greatest general. Why is the general so much the more prized, and the possession of him most honoured and most envied in a country? For it will be allowed by every one, that the people of the United States would rather have one hero than a hundred statesmen, one Alexander than a hundred Demostheneses. And Italy would barter a whole wilderness of philosophers for one successful captain. Is this really, as some people are but too apt to argue in our day, that the world admires vulgar butchery and slaying rather than the exercise of the great civic and administrative virtues? I do not believe in any theory so degrading. It is not the spilling of blood that the world admires, but it respects the great result, the final and decisive mode of obtaining it, and the extreme rarity of the many combinations which go to form a military hero. We are much accustomed to harangue against military ambition, and to lament when in certain cases peace or war is abandoned to the decision or caprice of an individual; but no individual can decree a war, and no general can lead it, at least to aught but failure, if both it and he do not represent a national sentiment, and if the banner which he unfurls is not one to which a great nation can look and rally. If war requires one mind to lead, that mind can do little without a thousand hearts to follow. The conqueror, therefore, becomes the expression and sentiment of thousands, and when that, after the anxiety of a long, a hard and a doubtful struggle, becomes at last triumphant, the chief, the hero and the symbol of it, of course eclipses in his fame any other fame that an individual can create or earn for himself. I see no reason, therefore, why the great statesman should be jealous at seeing the great captain carry away a meed of renown, far superior to any civilian one. And the fact, I think, may be accounted for in a way that is simple and at the same time honourable to humanity, instead of assuming that men love blood, and blindly worship those who spill it, and who illustrate themselves by large sacrifices of their fellow men. No, the admiration of England for Wellington is not a thirst for war, or a love of bloodshed. Neither is the reverence of the Frenchman for the memory of Napoleon a worship of military egotism. In neither case can the sentiments merely be vulgar ones, of having made England superior to the rest of the world, or France the dominatrix of Europe. It is the idea which the conqueror symbolized that made him be revered; this was national independence, and freedom from either a foreign political yoke, or a domestic social inequality; that was the principle that Napoleon represented; and Wellington represented one still more noble in maintaining the freedom and independence of this glorious island, and showing its capability to cope with the world, and rise not only unscathed, but triumphant from a quarter of a century's struggle with it. I feel quite confident, that no man ever wore a sword or commanded in a battle-field who was more alive to the great cause for which he fought, or who was more fully aware of the great interests he defended, than the Duke of Wellington. I, therefore, do look upon it as no inconsiderable humbug to say, that poor, simple, modest, soldier, he was influenced by no higher motive than duty. The duty of a soldier is considered that of obeying orders, and not flinching from peril or pain, without any professed inquiry into the interest at stake, or the para mount aim of the piece of which he makes a part. The idea of duty is literally inexplicable in such a man as the Duke of Wellington. And though it has been largely predicated of him, in prose and in verse, I cannot but think that this attempt to undersize a great man, is as false as it is futile. Wellington, indeed, never wrote the word glory in his despatches to Downing-street, or in the documents that were to come before a British public, and simply because he knew that public. Napoleon, on the contrary, stuffed his bulletins with the glory of France and of the Grand Army, and for precisely the same reason that Wellington did not employ them, viz., that he knew the people whom he addressed. Among the many tributes to the Duke of Wellington in poetry and prose, that which conveys the liveliest picture, is Mrs. Norton's wellknown lines, describing him precisely as he appeared in a ball-room, concert-room, and drawing-room. He frequented them all, with his lovely daughter-in-law upon his arm, never pleading age for refusing an invita The querulousness of the morning had altogether passed away from the Duke at his dinner-hour, and his evening's greeting was as cordial and good-natured, as his morning's were distant and morose. D'Orsay's portrait gives the best idea of the bowed frame, and sideways upward look. Though his step might be less firm, and his figure bowed, yet there was not a symptom of caducity about him. His limbs retained their symmetry, and his eye its expression to the last; so unlike Talleyrand, who seemed to have elephant's legs within his stockings, so awful when they tottered, and whose gigantic features seemed only kept from collapse by the pile of his interminable cravat. Few wore their years more nobly than the Duke. He was decorous and successful even in his last battle with time. A THOUGHT. Two mighty Warriors side by side, The last great words that History's page Allots to one-from age to age The world's undying praise to claim- The other died without a word; But future History shall record His life-and they who read shall own A. W. C. HOW GREAT BRITAIN ESTRANGED AMERICA.* MR. BANCROFT entitles this volume "Epoch the Second-How Great Britain estranged America." Such a subject does not seem at first sight very inviting for the contemplation of Englishmen. It is the record of the most discreditable and disastrous portion of our national career— yet it is one, which we must not turn away from. It is full of useful warnings for our present conduct, as well as suggestive of bitter regrets for England's policy in days gone by. We still have colonies equalling, or rather, surpassing in value those possessions of North America, which our ancestors alienated between 1763 and 1783. Australia, New Zealand, the Cape, and the Canadas, are teeming with the same hardy and highspirited race, that erected the United States of America from our dependencies to our rivals. There is a painful similarity between the tales of colonial discontents, and complaints of imperial mismanagement, that now continually reach us, and those that reached our ancestors eighty years ago from New England, Virginia, and the sister settlements. We are, in fact, called on to solve the problem, which baffled English statesmen of the last century. It is a problem that will continually recur, so long as this, or any other great nation founds colonies of her own stock, which thrive in their new homes. Political dependency will always be odious to man, especially to man of the energetic and independent Anglo-Saxon As subject-states grow stronger, they will always endeavour to shake off dominant tutelage, and obtain full liberty and equality. This does not necessarily imply separation. On the contrary, it may best be effected by drawing the cords of union still closer, and by blending the imperial and the dependent states into one body, with equal privileges and equal duties. To know the right time and the right manner of doing this; to win gratitude by freely accorded grants, and not to provoke contempt by extorted concessions,-constitutes the true science of ruling and preserving a vast and a composite empire. race. This volume of Mr. Bancroft's contains by far the fullest and the clearest account, that we have yet seen, of the conduct, by which English statesmen, acting in a spirit directly the reverse of that which we have indicated, irritated America into hatred, and at the same time inspired her with audacity. It is, therefore, a volume which deserves our careful study; but it has also other and more pleasing claims on our attention. It opens with an admirable description of the state of the European continent, and of England and its dependencies immediately after the peace of Paris in 1763. That is the epoch which many historians, foreign as well as English, have looked on as the culminating point of Great Britain's prosperity and glory. It is, therefore, an epoch, on which every student of modern history, even without reference to the closely following American war, must naturally pause to reflect. Mr. Bancroft's sketches of the condition of Prussia, Russia, Austria, the German Empire, the Netherlands, and Spain, at this crisis are spirited and just. But the two chapters on the state of England and its dependencies in 1763, are, in our judgment, the gems of the work. Besides the discriminating know • History of the American Revolution, by George Bancroft. Vol. ii. ledge, and the graphic vividness of description which they display, they show a sympathetic affection towards the old country with its old English virtues, and even its old English prejudices, which it is peculiarly gratifying to recognize in one, who is so worthy a representative of our Anglo-American kinsmen, as Mr. Bancroft. This description has already been largely quoted and deservedly praised by English critics; and we, therefore, forbear to insert it here. We pass on to advert to another merit of this work, as bearing upon strictly English history. We mean the full light which it throws on the origin of that movement in favour of Parliamentary Reform, which achieved its first great success within our own recollection, and still seems heaving towards further advances. It is very interesting to trace in these pages, how, when the assertors of the right of the English Parliament to tax America met the objection of America not being represented in the English Parliament by referring to the equally unrepresented state of Manchester and Birmingham, they raised the spirit of Manchester and Birmingham, and other similarly populous and unenfranchised places, to demand representatives, and to denounce the rotten boroughs and those who trafficked therein. Mr. Bancroft attaches just importance to the memorable debates, in which the English Houses of Lords and Commons resolved, in 1766, that the English Parliament had a right to tax America. In the doctrines, that there were laid down by the leaders of the great parliamentary majorities, by the Rockingham Whigs, as well as by Grenville and his partizans, a new school of English Tories found its principles and its formularies of faith. A new popular party in Great Britain arose simultaneously, as the natural and necessary antagonist of Toryism in this new phase. The greatest opponents of the claims of America foresaw the possibility of this; but they thought that by crushing the American heresy (as they deemed it) of taxation without representation being tyranny, they should prevent the risk of its becoming the creed of Englishmen also. Lord Mansfield scornfully remarked to the House of Peers: "There can be no doubt, my lords, but that the inhabitants of the colonies are as much represented in Parliament as the greatest part of the people in England are represented; among nine millions of whom there are eight who have no votes in electing members of Parliament. Every objection, therefore, to the dependency of the colonies upon Parliament, which arises to it upon the ground of representation, goes to the whole present constitution of Great Britain; and I suppose it is not meant to new-model that too." Such was the tone that then pleased the Peers of England. In the House of Commons the same feeling prevailed. We will lay before our readers the remarks of Mr. Bancroft on the debate in the Commons in February 1766, when Burke joined Grenville, Yorke, Blackstone, and Wedderburne, in arguing for England's unlimited supremacy,-when it was contended "That representation was not the basis of the authority of Parliament; that its legislative power was an absolute trust; that the kingdom and colonies were one empire; that the colonies enjoyed the opportunity of taxing themselves, as an indulgence; that the exemption from taxation, when conceded to the Counties Palatine, Chester, Durham, and Lancaster, or Wales, or Ireland, or the clergy, was exceptional; that duties and impositions, taxes and subsidies, were all one; and as kingdom and colonies were one body, Parliament had the right to bind the colonies by taxes and impositions, alike internal and external, in all cases whatsoever. "So the watches of the long winter's night wore away, and at about four o'clock in the morning, when the question was called, less than ten voices, some said five, or four, some said but three, spoke out in the minority; and the resolution passed for England's right to do what the Treasury pleased with three millions of freemen in America. The Americans were henceforward excisable and taxable at the mercy of Parliament. Grenville stood acquitted and sustained; the rightfulness of his policy was affirmed; and he was judged to have proceeded in conformity with the constitution. "Thus did Edmund Burke and the Rockingham Ministry, on that night, lead Mansfield, Northington, and the gentlemen of the long robe, to found the new Tory party of England, and recover legality for its position, stealing it away from the party that hitherto, under the Revolution, had possessed it exclusively. It was decided as a question of law, that irresponsible taxation was not a tyranny, but a vested right; that Parliament held power, not as a representative body, but in absolute trust. Under the decision, no option was left to the colonies but extreme resistance, or unconditional submission. It had grown to be a fact, that the House of Commons was no longer responsible to the people; and this night it was held to be the law, that it never had been, and was not responsible; that the doctrine of representation was not in the Bill of Rights. The Tory party, with George III. at its head, accepted from Burke and Rockingham the creed which Grenville claimed to be the whiggism of the Revolution of 1688, and Mansfield the British Constitution of his times. "In England, it was all over with the Middle Age. There was to be no more Jacobitism, no more need for legitimacy at home, no more union of the Catholic Church and the sceptre. The new Toryism was the child of modern civilisation, It carried its pedigree no further back than the Revolution of 1688, and was but a coalition of the King and the aristocracy upon the basis of the established law. By law the House of Hanover held the throne; by law the English Church was established, with a prayer-book and a creed as authorized by Parliament, and with such bishops as the Crown gave leave to choose; by law the Catholics and Dissenters were disfranchised, and none but conformers to the worship of the legal Church could hold office, or sit in the Legislature; by law the House of Commons was lifted above responsibility to the people; by law the colonies were 'bound' to be taxed at mercy. The Tory party took the law as it stood, and set itself against reform. Henceforward its leaders and lights were to be found, not among the gallant descendants of ancient houses; not among the representatives of mediæval traditions. It was a new party, of which the leaders and expounders were to be new men. The moneyed interest, so firmly opposed to the legitimacy and aristocracy of the Middle Age, was to become its ally. Mansfield was its impersonation, and would transmit it, through Thurlow and Wedderburn, to Eldon. "It is the office of the law to decide questions of possession. The just judge is appointed to be the conservator of society. Woe hangs over the land where the absolute principles of private law are applied to questions of public law; and the effort is made to bar the progress of the undying race by the despotic rules which ascertain the rights of property of evanescent mortals. Humanity smiled at the parchment chains which the lawyers threw around it, even though those chains were protected by a coalition of the army, the navy, the halls of justice, a corrupt Parliament, and the Crown. The new Tory party created a new opposition. The non-electors of Great-Britain were to become as little content with virtual representation as the colonists. Even while Mansfield was speaking, the press of London gave to the world a very sensible production, showing the equity and practicability of a more equal representation throughout the whole British dominions; and also a scheme + for a general Parliament, to which every part of the British dominions should send one member for every twenty thousand of its inhabitants." Monthly Review for Feb. 1766, vol. xxxiv. p. 155. + An Account of a Conference on the Occurrences in America, in a letter to a friend, 1766, pp. 38-40. |