The changed tone of the late great agricultural meetings is, if possible, a more heart-felt cause of congratulation than the formidable attitude, the elastic energy, and rapidly-growing strength of the Anti-cornlaw League. Those convictions must long have been working in secret which found such strong expression at these farmer assemblies, where things have not been minced or said by halves. The death-warrant of those foolish and iniquitous laws-for they are not more iniquitous than foolish-has been signed by the agriculturists themselves; which leaves no chance for a rescue, and little encouragement for the attempt. There is another advantage. Having surrendered

to be given to the country to right itself. | the same kind of tacit delusion. He indubiThe Corn Laws must go in the first place; tably allowed the Reformers to indulge in -and they are doomed, and are scarcely fond fancies of what the Whig administraworth longer consideration from their op- tion was to do; and, when the time came, ponents; since some of their supporters turned round and taunted them with their have themselves magnanimously spoken credulity:-He never had meant any such their sentence. They remain but a question thing! If Sir Robert Peel should bubble of time, and surely of very brief time,-as the farmers in the same style, there is yet we cannot believe that Sir Robert Peel, who this great difference in the result of the dehas, on former occasions, had the manly hu- ception, that his is for their ultimate salvamility, and true wisdom and patriotism to tion, and for the more immediate relief of adopt whatever was commendable in the the nation. Let us only find that Sir Robert policy of his rivals, will pertinaciously cling proves himself an arch-deceiver to the hopes to a measure proved to be worthless, even of selfishness and injustice; and long may to those for whom it was devised, merely the monopolists be so deceived! The more because it is not quite a year old, and was of intelligent of the agricultural party do not his own contrivance. It has surely been seem to fancy that they have been betrayed. tried quite long enough, the moment that its futility is demonstrated. We would hope that the Minister will as frankly throw his useless Sliding Scale overboard, as adopt the Whig modifications of the Sugar Duties, and, if he please, out-bid the liberality of the Whigs. His difficulties are easily foreseen; and therefore on these, and any liberal measure, or measure of liberal tendency which he may propose, it is the duty of every man who wishes well to the country, and hopes to prosper in the general prosperity, to support a Minister-Tory though he be denominated-who has already done the state some small service, and obtained credit for an inclination to do more, if he is permitted; if he is, in other words, supported by the country against the selfish imbeciles of his own party. Whatever may be the tactics, or, rather, the tempers of the wilder portion of Sir Robert's friends, the duty of Reformers is clear enough. A clamor has been raised by the Whig partisan press, because Sir Robert Peel seems inclined to delude the agricultural interest, has, in fact, deceived the farmers, though Mr. Estcott and others seem to think this system of delusion will really serve the agriculturists; and no one doubts that, if Sir Robert means free trade in spirit, while restriction is maintained only in words, that this is a kind of delusion which must promote the interests of the whole people, and therefore merits a better What shall be said of another kind of delusion, dexterously practised, for a series of years, by another statesman who deluded the Reformers into the expectation that something great was to be done, and ended by telling the people, in plain terms, that even "The Bill" was intended to strengthen the landed interest in the House of Commons! Let us no longer be duped by party names, and made the tools of factious interests. Lord John Russell practised

name.

Among their other efforts, the active and indefatigable National Anti-corn-law League_some time since offered prizes for the three best Essays on Agriculture and the Corn Law." From those offered the three to which the prizes were awarded have been published; and they will, we trust, be speedily circulated far and wide, among the tenant farmers and farm laborers of Great Britain and Ireadvocate the same principles, and use the same land, whom they are intended to enlighten. They strain of argument to which our readers have long been familiar in our pages. and especially in the Political Register of Tait's Magazine for the eight or under the superintendence of the late James Johnnine years during which the Political Register was ston Darling, W. S., with whom agricultural science was a favorite pursuit, and who understood the subject well, both practically and theoretically. The opinions advanced in these Essays, and those begin. ning to be avowed at the agricultural meetings, were unceasingly inculcated by Mr. Darling; and his words have not been as water spilt upon the Repealer, from a sincere conviction, common to ground. Mr. Darling was from the outset a Total him with some of the most intelligent Scottish farmers, that the deprivation of the so-named protection must be for the advantage of the farmers thembas, under all circumstances, given a lavish protecselves, and ultimately of the landlords also. Nature tion to British farmers in the distances from which the corn supplies of the country must be drawn ; and from the superior skill, capital, and improved processes of husbandry that must be forced into play by the withdrawal of the enervating protective duties, Mr. Darling always expressed the utmost con

their own monopoly, the landed interest will show no mercy to any other.* Free trade in corn is free trade in every thing.

speedy relief. Regarded merely as a Tariff, and not in its remote though weightiest results-as the hopeful entering of the The main foundation of the hope on which wedge, in the process of overthrowing all we now rest is, that the deep-seated evils of monopolies-the Peel code promises but our condition being better understood, there slender aid to the manufacturers when comis more chance of unanimity as to the na-pared with their necessities; while another ture of the remedy to be administered. and another hostile Tariff bristles up in the There is, so far as we can ascertain, no face of our commerce; nor dare we well abatement of the symptoms. Trade be- complain of receiving back from foreign, comes every day worse and worse. Whole nations the measure we have meted. The communities are nearly unemployed, starv- total repeal of the Corn Laws, however just ing, and despairing; and a fearful relaxation and necessary, cannot at once, nor yet, it of morals, and letting go of the decencies is to be feared, of itself, renovate healthful and proprieties of the humblest life that is production, and restore the manufacturing sustained by regular industry, must be the system to soundness and prosperity. More consequence of those habits of idleness and is required, much more-the abrogation of vagrancy to which so many of the young many burdens, and the removal of many and of the rising generation are at present impediments, which Sir Robert Peel has left condemned :-Nor do we see any chance of untouched; nay, the total emancipation of fidence in the farmers successfully competing with manufacturing industry. And how is this foreigners, if not in one kind of produce, then in mighty change to be effected By a others equally profitable. We rejoice to find such more sweeping reduction of duties? That doctrines making rapid way. These Prize Essays the insatiable demands of the State Reve form a valuable compendium of them. nue forbid. The nation, which is almost above measure impatient of the Income-tax in its present form, would absolutely revolt at the amount of direct taxation which might justify Sir Robert Peel in relaxing some of the duties that press the hardest upon the great manufactures of the country. Hostility to this obnoxious impost-the Income-tax, is, we fear, even more general than hostility to monopolies and restric tions on trade; and so determined will the attack already begun be, that unless the Minister has some tempting equivalent with which he can bribe the acquiescence of the country, his Income-tax must go, or he must go; however necessary both may in the meanwhile be to the public welfare. The Tariff is found to be no money equi valent for the Income-tax, though the repeal of the Corn Laws and the reduction of the Sugar Duties might help to fulfil the promise held out by Sir Robert when the tax was imposed; and nothing can compensate to private feeling for the attendant mischiefs of that measure as it at present exists. But were its inquisitorial, unequal, and irritating character corrected, and some great and substantial equivalent offered, in the shape of relieving and stimulating industry, with the farther hope of gradual approximation to a thoroughly sound fiscal system-to, in short, direct taxation—even the hateful Income-tax might find and deserve advocates as a step in advance. But we are not so near the political millennium as we dream of; and he must be a very enlightened man, and a very good patriot in

*The galvanic throes of the Quarterly Review are to us another cheering symptom. The poor gentleman who writes about the League in that publication is evidently crazed; though there is no little malignity in his madness. Had he had a few more weeks for consideration, his very extraordinary demonstration might probably have been changed into a decent adjustment of the mantle preparatory to the inevitable fall. The desperate and curious piece of rigmarole to which we allude is of great length. It revives the stale and self-refuting calum ny of the manufacturers having incited the formidable outrages of last autumn. It deals hugely in CAPITAL and Italic letters, a mode of printing, acCording to the same Quarterly, (page 79,) which may be defined as designating what especially demands skipping." There is, consequently, a great deal of that raw-head-and-bloody-bones article that especially demands skipping." Its sting lies mainly in its tail, though its spines bristle all over. It would put down the League with the strong hand, as "Jacobinical-raising-money, organized and affiliated;" and finally endangering THE SAFETY OF THE STATE. Thus thirty years ago, or less, the same parties-probably the same individual writer for one-would have put down the Anti-slavery Society, which also raised money, was affiliated, and sent forth lecturers who, in Bristol and Liverpool, were even more roughly handled than the lecturers of the League have been. But the Quarterly's scribe, not contented with attacking the members of the League, also denounces the ladies who have co-operated, (as English women, to their honor, have often before done in works of charity and mercy,) as political agitators, wheedling the workmen by styling them" gentlemen" in the circulars addressed to them-and who are, moreover, "the femelles de ces mâles" who head the League; a mode of designation sufficiently brutal in the origi nal idiom, and not much improved in the delicate use of an English "gentleman." The article, how ever, places many pithy quotations from speeches and letters before the Quarterly's readers; and cannot fail to do good, especially when viewed in connection with what has been accomplished, and the lowered tone of the Monopolists.

deed, who will voluntarily agree to pay a straw-is an eminent cause of gratulation, liberal per centage upon his income or his both from what it has given, and what it realized property, merely to provide such promises; and peace preserved with Amea public revenue as might justify the aboli- rica is a common and inestimable blessing, tion of all protecting or prohibitory duties. not alone to the two countries immediately Were he screwed up to the pitch of making concerned, but to the whole human race, this sacrifice, in the fruits of which he The finances of the country could not would ultimately share to the full,-he longer afford expensive wars; nor did conwould be entitled to look for a previous sciousness of their justice strengthen us complete revision of the public expenditure, for the combat. In Sir. Robert Peel, we and to demand that retrenchment be carried believe, we shall have a promoter of peace, to the quick in every department of the wherever else he may halt. Another state where the public interests warrant re- ground of gratulation is found in the late trenchment. With our present complica- indications of returning good sense among ted system of taxation, and overwhelming those of the "physical-force" Chartists, necessity for an immense yearly revenue, who, from ignorance, and the instigation of if public faith is to be kept, the change we foolish, if not wicked leaders, were incited have been contemplating looks Quixotical to violate the law, and who thus brought and impossible; as one which nothing short down its vengeance upon themselves, while of revolution and a national bankruptcy they have brought disgrace and discomficould introduce. We are not so sure of ture upon an honest cause. With how this. "Impossible is the adjective of fools." many specious arguments has the conduct A few months back, who would have hoped of these misled men furnished the opposers to hear Mr. Estcott and his brethren exhort- of every extension of the franchise; who ing the farmers to rely, not upon "protec- now scornfully inquire if the plunderers tion," but, like other industrious and inde- and incendiaries of the late riots, are the pendent men, upon their own exertions and sort of men for whom is demanded, as of skill. This looks almost as great a mir. right, a direct influence in making the laws? acle as converting the whole nation to the The insurrection, for that, it seems, is the principle of direct taxation ; a principle only imposing though incorrect name given to of secondary importance to that of univer- the late riots, has certainly no necessary sal direct representation, which must, connection with the claim of the unrepreamong other reforms, ensure a second sys-sented for the Suffrage: but when some of tem of raising the public revenue.

the Chartists even boast that this was a We do not wish to take a desponding Chartist movement, and not a strike for view of the state and prospects of public af- wages, many among the middle classes, fairs. The country has probably seen, for who were previously favorable to the es the present, the worst of its evil days,-if sentials of the six points, began to doubt if not yet the end of them; for now their the claimants yet possess that common complicated causes and the remedies begin sense qualification which alone can make to be generally understood; and though we the franchise in their hands safe to others, dare not be so sanguine as to anticipate a or useful to themselves. We, who consispeedy and effectual cure, we may confider the extended suffrage an element of dently look forward to a gradual ameliora- safety to the body politic, as well as the tion of the more distressing symptoms, so right of the unrepresented, disclaim such soon as the trade in food is unfettered. apprehensions; without, however, being Skill, enterprise, capital untold, anxiously able, in the face of the alarming facts waiting to be employed in setting busy hands in motion, are still ours, and only require free channels through which they may flow, to bring back the ease, content, and prosperity which it is, at the eleventh hour, discovered will not always wait even upon that protected class to which all the others have been sacrificed. Instead of indulging in gloom, we would rather dwell upon the blessings which chequer the bitter adversity of the hour.. Peace in the East and in China-to the news of which the desponding heart of the weighed-down nation leapt, as a drowning man clutches at a

which countenance contrary opinions, to persuade our friends that their fears are fallacious. But one cause of unmingled satisfaction is the growing good sense, and frank good humor displayed of late by the farmers and a few of the landed gentlemen; whom one is disposed to rejoice over like the woman over her lost talent; to find which caused her more joy than the possession of all the rest of her treasure. The advocates of the Total Repeal of the Taxes on the People's Food, the LEAGUE-now

prosperous gentlemen," we already had; the Complete Suffragists we had, and highly

were both to be esteemed and valued; but | was said to generate a certain self-conceit, here is a new and almost unhoped-for ac- unknown and foreign to the rest of the Ger cession of potent auxiliaries, who make a mans. Nevertheless we find both develwise and generous surrender, instead of oped to a very satisfactory pitch among the protracting a weak and exasperated hostili- honest burghers of Hamburg, and in the ty. If any part of this change is owing to clime of fat and cloudy Holstein. Of Heine Sir Robert Peel's delusions, all praise to it might be said, that the air of Paris had him! He is gaining to himself in the far-given sharpness to his wit, and half Frenchimers a phalanx of supporters in every useful fied the German. But here is another Hamcommercial reform that he may project; burger, Gutzkow, a German all over, as utfor the agriculturists, if stripped of their terly uninoculated with the ideas as with own privileges, will have little indulgence the language of France, and yet he is as for the monopolies and protecting duties of lively as a Frenchman of the last century, the other favored interests. petulant as a child, and impertinent as Paul Pry: that is, if Paul Pry were to publish memoirs and tours. Herr Gutzkow enters every celebrated house in the French metropolis, at least those owned by men emi

In the meanwhile, and until the hour of distress is past, or its worst ills mitigated, never at any former epoch in the history of the country were consideration, and kindness, and bountifulness to the extreme suf-nent in either politics or literature. And he ferers, the unemployed, so much demanded as they are now, and must be for months to come. In relation to this we rejoice to see that a Poor Law for Scotland is at last under the consideration of the government, and that preliminary steps are immediately to be taken. This is a subject on which Sir Robert Peel is as well entitled to demand the support of the Liberals as in those commercial reforms which are expected from him; and we make no doubt that he will obtain it from the country at large, if not from the whole landed class of the North. But before any Poor Law can come into operation, years must elapse, and the prevailing misery is extreme: an extraordinary crisis must be met by an extraordinary effort.

LETTERS FROM PARIS.

From the Foreign Quarterly.

Briefe aus Paris. Von KARL GUTZKOW. (Letters from Paris. By CHARLES GUTZKow.) Leipzig. 1842.

sets forth to the public the entire conversation, manner, personal appearance, and habits, of every one of his receivers or his hosts. However reprehensible this, we are yet perhaps wrong to style it as impertinence in Gutzkow, who with all his wit is simple as a child, and tells all he saw and heard as innocently and naturally, as if it was a thing of course. And so perhaps it was. Parisian eminencies are very apt to poser, or give sittings, to curious strangers, in order to allow the daguerreotypist or the moral portrait-painter to carry off what he can, and make the most of it. Gutzkow seems to have felt this. For he avows that amidst all the persons he saw and talked with, he penetrated to but one family circle during his residence in Paris.

It is not, however, a six weeks' tourist, no matter what his sagacity or his country, who can give fitting portraiture of the men. holding first rank in France. It is necessary to have seen them in past and in present, and to have observed them in the difvery ferent positions into which the fortune of a few years has flung them.

In order to depict M. Guizot, for example, we must have seen, twenty, nay thirty We must have made some mistake in our years ago, the ardent young constitutional old estimation of the Germans, finding them ist, full of that protestant hatred for Napoas we do so much the reverse of all previous leon's regime, so universally felt in his na conception. The two qualities which we tive town of Nismes; a feeling which nearshould have least thought of attributing to ly caused Napoleon himself to be stoned at them, are certainly vivacity and imperti- Orgon on his journey to Elba. Ten years nence. Yet never did we see these devel- later, the same person should have remarkoped to a greater degree than in the writings ed Guizot in the historical professor's chair of recent German travellers, critics, and of the Sorbonne, attended not by a numer. controversial writers. Prince Puckler Mus-ous but by a most attached band of hearers, kaw was a personification of both. But the to whom he expounded the mysteries of prince, we learned, was doubly an exception: English history. We recollect him well. first, as a prince and a scapegrace; second- It was not yet the period of the historic maly, as a Prussian. For the air of the Spreenia, when Guizot grew more popular. At

that time, in 1822, Cousin's vague philoso- this, he withdrew from politics-indeed his phy and Villemain's shallow criticism drew protestantism became itself a bar to his adcrowds to their lectures, muddy-thoughted vancement-and took refuge in his profesas were the one, empty-thoughted the other, sorial chair. By this he raised himself to whilst the really solid and useful informa- an eminence more certain and less dangertion offered by Guizot was comparatively ous than that which the Chamber of Depuneglected. But the man was not to be put ties bestowed in those days. The ecclesidown either as man of letters or statesman. astical minister of public instruction now He and his wife set to work, each writing a stopped his lectures; on which Guizot joinscore of books in a twelvemonth: and thus ed the writing of political pamphlets to the he kept his name fixed before the public eye graver task of historic editing. Attached for years. Perseverance, and an impertur- to the party of the Doctrinaires, to that of bable determination to occupy first place, Royer Collard and Camille Jordan, Guizot have been and are the first characteristics rose with his party, and with it was on the of M. Guizot: a desire, not compounded of point of coming into power and place under a wish for wealth or luxury, or the adjuncts M. de Martignac, when Charles the Tenth of eminence; but a love of eminence for madly threw himself, in horror of a modeitself, for its activity, for its satisfying the rate ministry, into the arms of Polignac, cravings of a spirit, purely and naturally and with Polignac into exile. The day after ambitious. the revolution, Guizot was minister.

Our first glance at Guizot was when in his home at Nismes, under a mother's brow: a mother, too, who had lost her husband on a revolutionary scaffold. That must have been a grave, a solemn, a religious home; whose gayest pastime was severe study; whose every feeling partook somewhat of the depth of devotion.

What a cabinet was that! It was composed of thirteen or fourteen persons, not one of whom had ever acted with the other, and all most opposed in habits, temper, and political ideas. Imagine Count Molé and M. Lafitte, Dupont de l'Eure and the Duc de Broglie sitting together in council! Lafitte and Dupont talked as if they were in a About a day's journey from Nismes, in conciliabule of opposition, and the Duc de the same region of ardent and eloquent spi- Broglie politely told them that they had no rits, a youth ten years younger than Guizot idea of how a government was to be carried was at school. Even at that time the strong- on. All were in a panic, Louis Philippe est antagonism, though unknown one to the himself included. But each had his own other, existed between the feelings of both. object of terror, and each set about comYoung Guizot's ideas were those of protes- bating his phantom, caring little for his tant and constitutional liberalism, such as neighbors. Louis Philippe and M. Guizot the Feuillans had preached and fallen with agreed in dreading the powers and poten in the great revolution. Theirs was bred in tates of Europe, from whom they expected quite another school. Like the majority of an immediate onslaught: but each prepared his college, he was liberal in a revolutiona- for resistance in his own way. Louis Phiry and Napoleonite sense; that is, more ur- lippe took an honest and respected legiti gent on the transformation of France from mist, the Duc de Mortemart; bamboozled monarchism and aristocracy to pure democ- him by saying, that he would merely keep racy, than caring either how this was to be the throne warm for the Duke of Bourdeaux; effected, or what was to be the result. Each and sent him to deliver this message to the rose with the tide that suited him: Guizot Czar of Russia in order to keep him quiet. with that of 1814 and 1815, Thiers with the This tremendous lie had its effect; but neiswell which preceded and produced 1830. ther the Duc de Mortemart, nor the Czar of Guizot, a young universitarian, was placed by Russia ever forgave Louis Philippe. M. the Abbé de Montesqueoir in the office of tl e Guizot, on his part, thought the best mode French Chancellerie, or Ministry of Justice, of resistance was to excite revolution. He in which he must have seen and done dirty gathered together the emigrant Spaniards, work, such as the preparation of categories of gave them money, directions, and ordered exile and proscription, and edicts of censor- Mina into Spain. Similar manœuvres were ship. Yet a liberal might have thought these put in practice on the side of Belgium. M. necessary, against the scum of imperialists Guizot during this was minister of public and jacobins united. Whatever M. Guizot instruction; Count Molé was the foreign thought, however, his employers intended minister. But when Molé saw that the the despotic reaction not merely against ul-king, and M. Guizot, and M. de Talleyrand, tra-liberals, but against the whole class even and ten others, were more foreign minister of constitutionalists. When Guizot saw than himself, he resigned.