of baubles and ribands, when he might have impersonated the great principle of simple freedom in purified France We call it the old game, and a vulgar game, because with him it was an end, almost as much as with Louis XIV. He was a Louis XIV. with some traces of Louis XI., save that his barbers and provost-marshals, his Tristans and Oliviers, wore uniforms. We are not speaking of the policy or necessity of his wars. Every country in Europe had a share in their bloody responsibility. He is not, by any means, so much alone in that burden as England would fain have us believe. But what had he, the child of a revolution, to do with a dynasty and all its miserable trappings? The helmet and the crown sit ill together; the plume has no place in a diadem. Europe will see no more warrior kings. We can pardon Napoleon the bayonets of the 19th Brumaire. Life and honour were on the one side, the miserable intrigues of an effete assembly on the other. But then came the test and trial of his greatness.' Had he ultimately perished in an effort to carry out and consolidate the principles upon which the revolution commenced, and rightfully and holily commenced, he would never have known Jena and Austerlitz, but he would have set a great name in the light of immortality, and given an impetus to the freedom, which for so many years he contemned and retarded.

The career of this ambitious soldier is another of those lessons which, at length, will teach mankind not to trust their destinies out of their own keeping. They are every day learning to resume the trusts they have confided, and only to part with them again with broader security, and on a different tenure. They even begin to talk of governing themselves, though M. Polignac, dating from his Doubting Castle of Ham, declares that this is most absurd logic. "For all authority," says he, 'implies subjection, and how can a party exercise control over himself; there is no one to exact the penalty." We should vote for the immediate release of M. Polignac, were we so fortunate as to have a seat in the French Chamber, to whichever political party we might adhere. He is incapable of farther mischief. But this is by the way. If a phrase is to upset all our state-theory and practice, we must change it. In the mean time, however, we must repeat that the people are beginning to talk of governing themselves. Ten-pound freeholders are

The future emperor could hardly master his bent until he was sure of his first step. Before the commencement of the session he so abruptly adjourned without day, he perambulated the purlieus of the council chambers, "suivi de quelques grenadiers, et se livrant prématurément à son caractère, il disait, comme le vingtième roi d'une dynastie: Je ne veux plus de factions: il faut que cela finisse; je n'en veux plus absolument."

ever and anon astonished at their own importance, all mute and voiceless as they have hitherto been. The canvass is becoming more costly and more troublesome. Schedule A. and schedule B. are but types of the decline and fall of schedules yet unbaptized. The unreasonable commons require that

and talk of triennial parliaments, close voting, and other the like enormities. They even hint at universal education and political equality, those unblest devices of cis-Atlantic radicalism. Gracchus has turned his face to the forum, and his back on the Curies.

We cannot help imagining what a sensation the book before us would have created in his mind, had it fallen in the way of the member for Rattenbury, or any other representative in Parliament of a smith's shop and an alehouse two hundred years ago. He would have made "a star-chamber matter of it." It would have been burned in the market-place by the common hangman, and its author would have suffered some such gentle infliction as the loss of an ear, a slit in his nose, the pillory, or it may be the gallows. The worthy member alluded to, sitting in Parliament by the grace of God and of the Duke of Buckingham, voting, like a serf as he was, according to his master's orders, thinking, like Bishop Neile, that the breath of Parliament was in the king's nostrils, might be excused for his panic. What was he that he should be wiser than the universities, the bishops and the peers? Sixty or seventy years later, how the parasite Swift would have inveighed against it! With what apt scurrility of illustration and ready, dexterous sophistry, he would have exposed and entangled its simple truths. What changes would have been rung upon the constitution of the realm, the rights of Parliament, and the safety of the state! The poor slave of a court, the mortified and miserable expectant of honours for which he had changed his conscience into a foul and servile drudge, could not fail to have denounced the simple and honest logic of a freeman who knows no prompter but conviction resting on testimony. Later still that other overweening Leviathan, who was a sycophant without any of the rewards or honours of sycophancy, who had arguments ready made for tyranny, and knew small difference between patriots and rebels, could have found wonderful food for spleen in the volume before us. The man who judged dead poets by their political creed, would scarce have spared a living philosopher, and the jackall would have told how the lion roared-"Sir, every syllable that is not flat nonsense, is hight reason." A few

years nearer our own time, how delicately Canning would have refuted the "dangerous dogmas" of the new theory of representation, how clearly would he have proved that abuse, as it is called, is at the very foundation of the British constitution, and that the logic of common sense has nothing to do with the matter. How infinitely well he would have shown that Parliament represents the whole nation, and that modern ideas of district representation are absurd; that the Duke of Devonshire has a right to send six members to the House of Commons, although Leeds or Manchester sends but one. We have no quarrel with Swift or Johnson, the member for Rattenbury, or the member for Liverpool. They had a right to entertain and enforce their own convictions in such manner as their sense of duty suggested; by terror, by scurrility, by ingenious declamation or refined sophistry. Great as some of them undoubtedly were, they seem to have lost sight of, or rather they had not become aware of the fact, that thinking beings, enlightened by the mighty efforts of the last four centuries, the product, as it were, of all the toil and all the suffering of that bitter period, and of all its wonderful progress too, have alighted upon a new principle in political science. The philosophers of a past school of government, never looked beyond physical condition. Those of the present, assert man's intellectual rights. It is the age of mind.

We have taken up Mr. Foster's book, not because it contains any new truths, or any truths not very generally disseminated on this side the Atlantic. His theory of political representation is adopted and practised upon here; in truth, it is, in a great measure, borrowed from our constitution.Foreign discovery has not yet proceeded beyond American experiment. But we think it useful occasionally to let our readers see the progress of opinion abroad, and what ground is taken by a sober man, of acknowledged honesty, integrity, and literary distinction, between the conservatives on the one' side and the radicals on the other,-in short, what are the notions of an English reformer of the present day. We hold this work, on account of its calm tone, and logical course of argument, to be of especial value for this purpose. A parliamentary declamation, or a heated party pamphlet, always says more than it means,-a tale, an allegory, or a poem, frequently means more than it says; but a professedly scientific treatise, which states a proposition, explains, illustrates and proves it, before it proceeds to another, though it may not amuse, is pretty certain to contain definite and appreciable instruction. The author says of his work that

"The essay will probably be characterized as being substantially an attempt to deduce the science of government, as far as political repre

sentation is concerned, from the principles of human nature; a task which has been very unceremoniously classed amongst things not to be accomplished."

In his examination of the objections to this attempt, Mr. Foster impliedly, if not expressly, admits that the attempt has been made; and so far we may add, successfully, that the advocates of a representative system can scarcely wish for a fuller exposition of the true basis of their political belief. The very great importance of the fact, that the foundations of our own system of government are deeply fixed in the very nature of man, and that the ultimate end of civilization, of human progress and knowledge, is to extend and confirm them, can be appreciated by every enquirer, who has been bewildered and dismayed by the idea that government is the mere accident of popular caprice or physical power. The most disheartening view of political history is that which forces upon us the belief that each succeeding system is an experiment, destined, like its predecessors, to recede and be obliterated, as wave washes away the remembrance of wave, instead of a step in the series of improvement by which our species is ascending to an ameliorated social condition. The one is the hypothesis of torpidity,—a stagnant, inert theory. It is to politics what predestination is to morals. The other is the hypothesis of action, of hope, and of progress, which brings the constitution of man into harmony with the best ends and aims of Christian philosophy.

"The system of political representation has, in actual practice, gradually worked itself, from a rude beginning, into a regular and determinate form, and has, at the same time, drawn the minds of men to investigate its objects and capabilities. These investigations have, in turn, modified its practical arrangements, till at length a political machine of great completeness and efficiency has been evolved, the joint product of experience and reflection.

"The system, thus matured, now presents itself as an object of science, the various parts of which are susceptible of explanation on determinate principles; and which may be still further improved and enhanced in usefulness by a more accurate and consistent application of the principles on which its efficacy is found to depend."

Necessity first forced men to confide their political interests to agents, and to make legislation a delegated trust. The functions of the Commons, at an early day, extended little beyond the exhibition of grievances and petitions for redress. The history of the toilsome march of popular authority, and its final prostration every where save in England, is the saddest, yet in one sense the most triumphant, chronicle of freedom.

That authority has more than once saved Europe from religious thraldom and military subjugation. It has yet, in its revival, to save her in this latter age, and in the fulness and completeness of matured power, from the dominion of antiquated abuses, and of that philosophy which, walking backwards, can see no light save that which is reflected from the tinsel of old crowns and mitres. It matters not who is conqueror in a temporary contest. He who sacked Warsaw may ravage the continent. "The great avenger" abides his time. Opinion grows under pressure, as the camomile by being trod on. The dastard Plantagenet, triple traitor as he was to his king, his conscience and his God, struggled in vain against it. What a stride from the first reform to the last, and what a simple instrument has the advance of science substituted for the swords of Runnymede,--"representation or no taxation!" We have some pride in reflecting who first taught the obstinate Brunswick that stern doctrine, and enforced it with stout hearts and strong hands.

In a country where the majority makes the law, it is not difficult to anticipate the principle in which any advocate of popular authority would enforce his theory of representation. It of course resolves itself into the true end of government, which, as we all agree, is to promote the public good, and the greatest good of the greatest number.

"Could it be shown that irresponsible power lodged in the hands of a single individual is productive of greater good to the community than any other description of authority, every wise man would be its supporter and advocate. On the same principle, could it be proved that such an arrangement, as placed power in the hands of an inconsiderable number of persons, who were not to be accountable for the use which they made of it, is recommended by a superiority in beneficial results over every other political system, a wise nation would not hesitate to adopt it. It would be no valid objection that it is unjust to give one man irresponsible power over his fellows, or a number of men uncontrolled authority over the rest."

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"This, then, is to be the universal criterion in matters of public concern, the test of forms of government, as well as of particular plans of representation, and of laws emanating from the constituted authorities. We are not to be decided in our choice by the circumstance of a political system conferring equal privileges, or by that, of its bestowing them on some descriptions of people, and withholding them from others. Whatever is the arrangement submitted to our option, it is to be preferred, on proof being adduced that notwithstanding its inequalities and partialities, it is, on the whole, the best for the community.