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that the reason of the public, much superior to that of any individual, will deduce fundamental rules. Our business is only to search out what has really occurred, and to know why it occurred, thus to assemble and to present together to all eyes the results of the experiments which have been attempted on our ancestors and on ourselves.

It will be therefore without concealment, without reserve, without the desire to establish any system, that we shall examine from the beginning of the French monarchy the effects of the despotism of the conquering army, on the manners, on the welfare, on the population, on the tranquillity, of the conquered country, and on the character of the conquerors: that we shall seek, at a later time, what was the influence of the clergy, who succeeded to almost all the rights acquired by the sword, and what religion and morality became in their hands, as well as what effect they had on the people whom they governed. We would afterwards know what was the general lot of individuals when the nation consisted only of a small number of proprietors who had divided among themselves the beautiful territory of France like a private patrimony, and for whom Anjou, or Poitou, was only a great farm, which the lord cultivated for his own profit with a certain number of oxen and slaves. We would know how the abuse of power could so completely stifle ancient valour: and if at this epoch of shame, a writer, a subject of the Carlovingians, allows that his fellowsubjects were become the most cowardly of men, far from suppressing his testimony, we shall be eager to examine it, that we way know the cause of so extraordinary a change. When the national valour revived, we would also know the cause of that; what were the consequences of those private wars which burst forth at the same time in every part of France; and if the feudalism of the eleventh century gave birth to some virtues, we would know at what price they were purchased.

Still later, the tyranny of the great in their provinces, the wretchedness of the peasants, their revolts, and their fury; the ill success of imprudent foreign wars; the incapacity of kings, and its consequences; the corruption of the national religion, and the convulsions occasioned by the efforts made to reform it; at last, the yet recent birth of despotism, its rapid progress, the honourable resistance of some bodies who defended the remains of a liberty always claimed, and never known; the debasement of those who called themselves knights, chevaliers, when they were only servants or courtiers, these are the things which it is of importance for us to know, which it is of consequence to study well, rather than the brilliant events of

war; for as to these, all nations, barbarous or civilized, free or enslaved, conquerors or conquered, religious or unbelieving, have been able, at some period of their history, to lay equal claim to them.

It is true that the study of history, when it takes this direction, brings with it grievous recollections, and fills the mind with painful feelings. We shall have to relate atrocious crimes, which never brought on their authors the punishment they deserved, heart-rending sufferings, a state of misery and despair from which we should eagerly turn away our eyes if it were presented to us in a fiction. But a friend to human nature ought to bring to the study of history that kind of firmness which he who wishes to relieve his fellow-creatures brings to the study of medicine or of surgery. He must not turn his eyes from the spectacle of the sufferings of human nature, however revolting it may be, for no progress can be made in the art of healing, without knowing the evil; no one can remedy the sufferings of our nature, without knowing what that nature is when left to itself, and how it is modified by those institutions which the heads of society have given it. What would be said of a physician, who having employed poisons among his remedies, was unwilling to know the sufferings, the tortures, the fatal consequences which they had produced, who would oppose the publication of his fatal experiments, out of regard for the sensibility of his readers, or that he might not bring discredit on aconite or corrosive sublimate?

There are poisons also in the social order, which it is sometimes necessary to employ. The absolute power of one man, or of an assembly of men, is a poison; the empire of the multitude is also a poison; fanaticism and superstition are poisons, so is infidelity. Is there one of their effects which we can conscientiously disguise from those to whom these same poisons will no doubt be offered as remedies? We have been told that the low superstition, the servility, the ignorance and brutality of the lower classes; the annihilation of all justice, of all salutary restraint in the higher, have not prevented that universal heroism which has been called chivalry, but which has, in fact, never existed except in brilliant fictions. Rather than lose this sweet illusion, and destroy this poetic world, shall we do violence to history, shall we refuse to see that such a social state, produced only the intolerable suffering and debasement of feudalism?

Perhaps our vanity is the principal cause which has endeared to our imagination those times of oppression and suffering, in which we have placed chivalry. Then began those illustrious

families whose names, become familiar to us, are signalized as exclusively historical; then also began all others, for then began the custom of giving family names, and every one feels as if his existence were prolonged when he discovers any links which may be added to the chain of his ancestors. Whatever may be the origin of the feeling, we should reproach ourselves if we neglected any of the threads which connect the past with the present time. All memorials even of separate families form, under more than one aspect, the identity, the individuality of a nation. The fear of having too much respect for ancient prejudices will not lead us to reject whatever they may have which is truly national; and in tracing up the history of the provinces, as well as that of the capital and the court, we shall preserve great names with the respect which is attached to all monuments which have triumphed over time, whether they recall victory or defeat, crimes and misfortunes, or virtue and suc

cess.

Those who have written on the history of France before the press was free, must have proposed to themselves an end totally different from that at which we aim. They must have forbidden themselves that philosophical examination which would have revealed to them the true connexion of causes and effects: the history of their country has been for them an exercise in rhetoric; they have borrowed from romance and poetry, that life and interest of which it seemed divested. From the wish to give it this life and interest, they have, as it were, placed under a microscopic lens certain periods which appeared to them most brilliant, most chivalric, such as the wars with the English in the 14th and 15th centuries, or the campaigns in Italy in the 16th, whilst they have passed with extreme rapidity over times less picturesque and less poetical, less rich in family recollections, less flattering to the vanity of all, but probably not less full of instruction.

We shall endeavour to establish a more equal proportion among the periods which the history of France embraces, so far at least as the extreme want of materials at some periods, and the extreme abundance in others, will allow of. With regard to the first, we shall never permit ourselves to supply by conjecture what it is not possible to know; and we shall think we have done enough by showing faithfully to our readers that limit to our knowledge which we have not the means to pass over: but with regard to the second, we shall not think ourselves obliged to say every thing, or to exhaust that rich spring of original memoirs, to which most of our readers will be delighted to recur when they have read a general history. The Revolution, by VOL. IV. No. 15.-New Series.

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interrupting the transmission of rights and privileges, has placed all past ages at the same distance from us. They may all serve to instruct us, but we are no longer governed by any of their institutions. When Louis the Sixteenth ascended the throne, Roman dominion had ceased in Gaul, for thirteen centuries. These thirteen centuries have formed the French nation, and have given it the temper, the character, the prejudices, the recollections which its legislators ought to know, that profiting by this knowledge, they may secure its happiness for the future. France, a prey for thirteen centuries to constant fermentation, has been continually decomposed and reunited: every thing changed with each generation,-manners, laws, the rights of the throne, those of the nobles, those of religion, and the condition of the people. These revolutions are, it is true, confounded to our eyes, in that common obscurity which covers those ages we call ignorant and barbarous. But the distaste with which they inspire us, nourishes a prejudice which is favourable to them, for we suppose that there was in the institutions of those ages, with which we have so little desire to become acquainted, a stability which they never acquired.

Should life and health be granted me, to continue to the end the task which I have imposed upon myself, I shall ask from these thirteen centuries, that lesson on social science which they keep in store for us. I shall endeavour particularly to make known the successive progress of the condition of the people, that interior organization, that state of happiness or suffering, which ought to be regarded as the great result of public institutions, and which can alone teach us to distinguish with certainty, what in them merits admiration or deserves blame.

ART. VI.-WHAT AM I TO BELIEVE?

No. II.

THERE is scarcely any subject that has been less inquired into, and discussed, than that which is termed the Providence of God. Nevertheless it is certain that the term is not universally understood in a single sense; and that the view of it given in the Confession of Faith is liable to the objections which we are now to state, still assuming the attributes of the Deity as the test of Truth. The injury to religion and morality inflicted by the unceasing differences among theologians is great: and until their discussions assume a less metaphysical character, and become less obscured by declamation, and until the Divine attributes shall be assumed as the foundation of all argument on theological subjects, the world will continue to be tossed about in a chaos of words, without even a distant prospect of a place of rest. The chapter of the Confession of Faith treating of the Providence of God thus begins :

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'God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy Providence; according to his infallible Foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise and glory of his Wisdom, power, justice, goodness and mercy."

This statement involves a contradiction in reference to the attributes of God, which may not all at once be apparent. If the meaning of the word Providence be, that the Creator is ever on the watch to direct all things in such a manner as to bring about specific ends previously arranged, that every action and event of a man's life is under special guidance, we have a definition to enable us to institute a comparison between the doctrine and the attributes. It is obvious that such a doctrine does not leave man as a free agent; but bound down to obey an uncontrolable force that impels him to good or to evil, whether he will or no. That the Creator should direct man to actions worthy of his nature, and to the proper use of the faculties bestowed upon him, would be consistent with His attributes. But that He directs us to disobey his commands, and to abuse our faculties so as to render ourselves the ministers of evil, is utterly inconceivable. Man acts worthily, and unworthily; and, if the doctrine be true, he acts in both ways by direct and divine influence, and not from choice; and hence this doctrine, equiva

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