Mustrative Notices.

THE Redemption Society proceeds upon the useful rule of having no useless labour on its estate, and of keeping the expenses within its income. Its indefatigable secretary, Mr. Green, who so unintermittingly labours for its welfare, deserves the esteem of the friends of social reform. As experiment is the crown of theory, we trust our friends will acquaint themselves with the state and policy of this society, and accord it the support it deserves.

On the last Ascension Day, Mr. Adderly, in the House of Commons, moved that the House should not sit; when Mr. Bright made the following remarks, worth preserving: There was a sort of hallucination over the minds of some hon. members as to the days on which the House should or should not proceed with public business; and, while he believed that all Christians regarded the momentous event of Ascension Day with the same feeling, yet he saw no reason why the House should give up its business on that day.' After referring to the inconvenience which would result from detaining witnesses in town about to be examined before Committees, the hon. gentleman said 'he opposed the motion on the ground that no one could tell, if the principle were adopted, where it would end. Next year, they would have some other hon. member proposing some other day; and then, perhaps, a contention between English, Îrish, and Scotch, in favour of patron saints. He looked upon motions like the present as symptoms of a growing feebleness on the part of the House, and a disinclination to do the business of the country."

Mr. Southwell has made some arrangements with Mr. Crabtree, of Manchester, for opening the Hall of Science in that town; but whether for amusement alone, or combined with lectures, is not known.

Mr. O'Connor, in the last Star but one, addressing the members located on the Bromsgrove estate, says, 'It has happened that, upon every single estate, the most fortunate allottees have invariably grumbled with £30 of aid-money in their pockets; and such an effect has this constant ingratitude had upon my feelings, that 1, with the consent of the Directors, have resolved to hold a Conference at Nottingham, on Monday, the 6th of August; when that Conference, representing the whole body of members, shall decide whether the affairs of the Company shall be wound up, and then I shall be able to present a balance-sheet to the Conference, from the period of the Report of the Parliamentary Committee, down to Saturday, the 4th of August. And that being done, after I have completed the purchase and subdivision of Mathon, the leases and conveyances to those who shall have paid their rents due in next November, and the conveyances to those who have paid the amount of bonus to entitle them to conveyance-when I have done this, I will hand over the whole property to trustees, to be appointed by that Conference. I will then retire from public life. I will purchase a hundred acres of land-erect an agricultural college-give instruction, clothing, and food to a hundred youths, and divide amongst them the whole profits of their labour-receiving, perhaps, as my reward, their ingratitude also. However, I am resolved, after the treatment I have received from those to whose services I have devoted my life, my intellect, and my property, that nothing shall induce me to abandon this resolution.'

Mr. W. Devonshire Saull has been, for some time, in a dangerous state of illness, and his recovery is scarcely expected.

The sight of a young lady in a Butcher's shop, or as they are called in Scotland 'Fleshers' Shops,' is an incongruity that few can feel reconciled to. Though this is not an absolute objection it is a suggestive one. There are many incongruities of sense we cannot abrogate, but we must abrogate all we can. The system of animal diet needs revision, and if vegetarians less resembled teetotalers in their advocacy-not in their habits-the practice would progress more.

G. J. H.

IN censuring, as Mr. Lewes does, Robespierre for his inflexibility in following out his own maxims, Mr. Lewes seems to us to give currency to great laxity of political morality, and to shake the faith of mankind in the wisest maxims of politics. A general rule once adopted is, with wise legislators, founded on the calculation that partial evil is compensated by the general good. There is no course free from evil, and the general rule-with all its occasional harshness-is generally more benevolent to the mass of mankind than the exceptional policy that leaves public government at the mercy of caprice. No judge ever sat upon the criminal bench who has not trembled as he pronounced some dreadful doom on particular erring culprits; but the judge is sustained by the great conviction that mercy to some individuals is cruelty to the whole people.

Robespierre seems often to have acted on this conviction. It cannot be hidden from such an accomplished philosopher as Mr. Lewes, that Benevolence, Generosity, and even Magnanimity, are but too often the virtues of vanity and weakness-that more cruelty would really be more kindness. To rescue this language of paradox, and make the meaning intended more plain, we may say that much of that which passes for private beneficence and generosity, is often a public evil. The grand question is what is real kindness? We fear to leave this question so briefly touched lest it should be misunderstood. So many will take this language to be an encouragement to hardness of feeling, and insensibility to human suffering-of which there is too much already in the world: but all we wish to be understood is, that when we intend to be kind we should care that we are so. The man who throws his money out of the window and leaves it, in the impulse of his beneficence, to be picked up by whomsoever straggles by, is the ideal of some men touching warm and generous natures, who know no cold calculation. The man who should take his money to his gate, and take care that some needy man had it, would be classed among those who wanted generous warmth of heart. Yet such a man would be the real benefactor. We have known many who would thus be classed among the cold calculators' who perform acts of refined and exalted generosity, who dry up the tears of sorrow, raise up indigence, assist industry, and make more wretched homes happy in one year than your generous men, whom the world commonly

[No. 165, Vol. VII.]

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applauds, do in their whole lives. The only offence these men commit is that of being sure that they are useful, and that their money is put to some effectual end. The thoughtless may scorn this calculation, but there are many who can bear grateful testimony to its regal value.

Amid the renovators of society of the first French Revolution, Robespierre appears to have been the chief revolutionist who had thought on these things. In this respect, as in many others, he was before his age, and seems yet to be before his commentators and biographers of 1849.

Mr. Lewes clears Robespierre from the charge of participation in the massacres of September. It is allowed that Robespierre remonstrated against them. But there is still left open the reproach that he did not act against them. Indeed, when it has been found impossible to connect Robespierre with the bloodshed ascribed to him, he has been made criminal for not preventing it. He is accused for his silence. Yet it appears to us that the nature of those times afford an ample solution of the enigma, and makes Robespierre's conduct to be not only necessity, but policy and wisdom. To do evil that good might come was a maxim in high repute among the early revolutionists. To sacrifice a portionto commit crime in order to accomplish a good-is not an error confined to the Committee of Public Safety.' We have lately seen our own government act upon it. We have seen them employing Powell to stimulate rebellion that they might have the credit and pleasure of crushing it. Danton said, we will kill the priests and nobles-they are not indeed guilty, but they are impediments, and they embarrass the future. Have not the moderate government of Odillon Barrot of this hour acted upon the same policy with regard to Rome? Even now nine-tenths of the world receive in practice the dogma that shedding blood is the grand specific "for preventing blood-shedding. Let us, therefore, learn justice of experience, when canvassing the acquiescence of one who sat in councils where the young St. Just uttered the bloody presentiment, that 'they who only half make revolutions dig their own graves.' The doctrine of murder had been taught these reformers by their tyrants, and the people were mad with it; and it was heroic and far-seeing in Robespierre-it manifested a reliance on reason far beyond his compeers-that he remonstrated against these determinations. But it would have been an arrogance and tyranny in him, which would never have been forgiven by those who now condemn him for his submission, had he sought to counteract the general will. The present writer has often sat in councilsinsignificant enough compared with these in question, but still analogouswhere he was equally powerless against the same doctrine; and in the agitations of popular political parties it is not an uncommon occurrence to witness the indignation of the oppressed reach so sublime a height as to make the protests of humanity, of experience and reason, appear feeble, cold, and cowardly, if not treacherous. All you can do in these storms is to wait till the fatal truth comes out that crime multiplies crime -that as one lie requires a hundred others to make it plausible, so one murder, whether committed by those in power or in opposition, necessitates a hundred others to defend it-and that only those can defeat oppression who dare be just, even under disadvantage. Robespierre, who

was a thinker, and who knew the tenor and course of revolutions philosophically, must have consciously acted his part. He must have known that in all great commotions there arise bodies of men who have never been inured to reason-who have been infuriated by tyranny until they have become tyrants to themselves, and rush conscientiously on their own destruction: men whom nobody can refute but themselves, and the only wise course is to sit down and let them do it. Robespierre appears to have done this, and in this respect proved his great practical wisdom. In Catholic countries especially, where men are reared and governed by fear, when they become reformers they write all their panaceas in blood. Robespierre early foresaw that he should not survive this experiment, that it would include him in its carnage-and it did; and the moral of his Life will not be read, till the political lesson of his death is understood by his followers.

When Robespierre could be reviled in security, it was said he was an audacious miscreant. When he was rescued from this imputation, it was said he wanted courage to be atrocious. When it was shown that he braved assassination, and stood at his post in the face of death, it was said: yes, he had courage, but it was always being screwed to the sticking point. But the coward is one who attempts to screw his courage up and fails, while Robespierre did accomplish the act of daring. Robespierre sat in the Hotel de Ville writing a proclamation as his murderers broke into it and ascended the stairs-he continued writing until they shot him.

'A known correspondent, writing from Paris, says "I have just been favoured with a private view of a most remarkable collection of historic documents connected with the first Revolution in France, and the men who were in turns its heroes and its victims: a brief notice of which—especially as, in order to facilitate certain family settlements among the heirs of the collector, the whole is about to be brought into the market-cannot fail to interest some of your readers. The collection is the property of the Saint-Albins, heirs of a famous leader in the times of the Convention and the Committee of Public Safety-whose identity will be understood by the historical reader, though for the sake of the living I refrain from writing his name. It consists of a unique and almost complete series of busts, portraits, autographs, pamphlets, and other documents.... One of them is the identical paper which Robespierre was signing when he was shot. It was the sight of this document which enabled Lamartine to refute the old calumny of the Tribune's having attempted self-murder rather than go to trial. The paper leaves no doubt. There are the letters Ro...., and then a splash of blood."'

The most inexplicable thing in Mr. Lewes's book is his account of the death of Robespierre. The account which he quotes is as stale as calumny itself, and should have been revised before being adopted. He is describing the passage to the guillotine: At length they reached la Place de la Revolution. Not a word did they address to the people Their doom was inevitable, and they believed they died as martyrs. Robespierre mounted the ladder with a firm step. The executioners tore off the band

Athenæum, April 28.