body, and the election of the member on an. other: so that though the alternation would take place between the two councils, it would turn out to be in an order directly opposite to that which was intended.

thing must be conjectured; for experience ena- | by conferring the choice of cand dates on one bles us to make no assertion respecting it. There is only one government in the modern world, which, from the effects it has produced, and the time it has endured, can with justice be called good and free. Its constitution, in books, contains the description of a legislative assembly, similar to that of M. Neckar's. Happily, perhaps, for the people, the share they have really enjoyed in its election, is much less ample than that allotted to them in this republic of the closet. How long a really popular assembly would tolerate any rival and co-existing power in the state-for what period the feeble execu tive, and the untitled, unblazoned peers of a republic, could not stand against it-whether any institutions, compatible with the essence and meaning of a republic, could prevent it from absorbing all the dignity, the popularity and the power of the state,-are questions that we leave for the resolution of wiser heads; with the sincerest joy, that we have only a theoretical interest in stating them.*

The executive senate is to consist of seven; and the right of presenting the candidates, and selecting from the candidates alternately from one assembly to the other, i. c. on a vacancy, the great council present three candidates to the little council, who select one from that number; and, on the next vacancy, by the inversion of this process, the little council present, and the great council select; and so alternately. The members of the executive must be thirty-five years of age. Their measures are determined by a majority. The president, called the Consul, has a casting vote: his salary is fixed at 300,000 livres; that of all the other senators at 60,000 livres. The office of consul is annual. Every senator enjoys it in his turn. Every year one senator goes out, unless re-elected; which he may be once, and even twice, if he unites three-fourths of the votes of each council in his favour. The executive shall name to all civil and military offices, except to those of mayors and municipalities. Political negotiations, and connections with foreign countries, fall under the direction of the executive. Declarations of war or peace, when presented by the executive to the legislative body, are to be adopted, the first by a majority of three-fifths, the last by a simple majority. The parade, honours, and ceremonies of the executive, devolve upon the consul alone. The members of the senate, upon going out of office, become members of the little council, to the number of seven. Upon the vacation of an eighth senator, the oldest exsenator in the little council resigns his seat to make room for him. All responsibility rests upon the consul alone, who has a right to stop the proceedings of a majority of the executive senate, by declaring them unconstitutional; and if the majority persevere, in spite of this declaration, the dispute is referred to and decided by a secret committee of the little council.

M. Neckar takes along with him the same inistake through the whole of his constitution,

That interest is at present not quite so theoretical as it was.

We perfectly acquiesce in the reasons M. Neckar has alleged for the preference given to an executive constituted of many individuais, rather than of one. The prize of supreme power is too tempting to admit of fair play in the game of ambition; and it is wise to lessen its value by dividing it: at least it is wise to do so under a form of government that cannot admit the better expedient of rendering the executive hereditary; an expedient (gross and absurd as it seems to be) the best calculated, perhaps, to obviate the effects of ambition upon the stability of governments, by narrowing the field on which it acts, and the object for which it contends. The Americans have determined otherwise, and adopted an elective presidency: but there are innumerable circumstances, as M. Neckar very justly observes, which render the example of America inapplicable to other governments. America is a federative repub. lic, and the extensive jurisdiction of the individual states exonerates the president from so great a portion of the cares of domestic government, that he may almost be considered as a mere minister of foreign affairs. America presents such an immediate, and such a seducing species of provision to all its inhabitants, that it has no idle discontented populace, its population amounts only to six millions, and it is not condensed in such masses as the population of Europe. After all, an experiment of twenty years is never to be cited in politics; nothing can be built upon such a slender inference. Even if America were to remain stationary, she might find that she had presented too fascinating and irresistible an object to human ambition: of course, that peril is increased by every augmentation of a people, who are hastening on, with rapid and irresistible pace, to the highest eminences of human grandeur. Some contest for power there must be in every free state: but the contest for vicarial and deputed power, as it implies the presence of a moderator and a master, is more prudent than the struggle for that which is original and supreme.

The difficulty of reconciling the responsibility of the executive with its dignity, M. Neckar foresees; and states, but does not remedy. An irresponsible executive, the jealousy of a republic would never tolerate; and its amenability to punishment, by degrading it in the eyes of the people, diminishes its power.

All the leading features of civil liberty are copied from the constitution of this country, with hardly any variation.

Having thus finished his project of a repub lic, M. Neckar proposes the government of this country as the best model of a temperate and hereditary monarchy; pointing out such alterations in it as the genius of the French people, the particular circumstances in which they are placed, or the abuses which have crept into our policy, may require. From one or the other of these motives he re-establishes the

ests of the church ought unquestionably to be represented. This consideration M. Neckar wholly passes over.*

Though this gentleman considers an heredi. monarchy as preferable in the abstract, he deems it impossible that such a government could be established in France, under her pre. sent circumstances, from the impracticability of establishing with it an hereditary aristocra cy; because the property, and the force of opinion, which constituted their real power, are no more, and cannot be restored. Though we entirely agree with M. Neckar, that an hereditary aristocracy is a necessary part of temperate monarchy, and that the latter must exist upon the base of the former, or not at all—we are by no means converts to the very decided opinion he has expressed of the impossibility of restoring them both to France.

salique law; forms his elections after the
same manner as that previously described in
his scheme of a republic; and excludes the
clergy from the house of peers. This latter
assembly M. Neckar composes of 250 hereditary
tary peers chosen from the best families in
France, and of 50 assistant peers enjoying that
dignity for life only, and nominated by the
crown. The number of hereditary peers is
limited as above; the peerage goes only in the
male line; and upon each peer is perpetually
entailed landed property to the amount of
30,000 livres. This partial creation of peers
for life only, appears to remedy a very material
defect in the English constitution. An heredi-
tary legislative aristocracy not only adds to the
dignity of the throne, and establishes that gra-
dation of ranks which is, perhaps, absolutely
necessary to its security, but it transacts a con-
siderable share of the business of the nation,
as well in the framing of laws as in the dis-
charge of its juridical functions. But men of
rank and wealth, though they are interested by
a splendid debate, will not submit to the drudg-
ery of business, much less can they be supposed
conversant in all the niceties of law questions.
It is therefore necessary to add to their number
a certain portion of novi homines, men of estab-
lished character for talents, and upon whom
the previous tenor of their lives has necessa-
rily impressed the habits of business. The
evil of this is, that the title descends to their
posterity, without the talents and the utility
that procured it; and the dignity of the peerage
is impaired by the increase of its numbers:
not only so, but as the peerage is the reward
of military, as well as the earnest of civil ser-
vices, and as the annuity commonly granted
with it is only for one or two lives, we are in
some danger of seeing a race of nobles wholly
dependent upon the crown for their support,
and sacrificing their political freedom to their
necessities. These evils are effectually, as it
should seem, obviated by the creation of a cer-
taint number of peers for life only; and the in-
crease of power which it seems to give to the
crown, is very fairly counteracted by the ex-
clusion of the episcopacy, and the limitation
of the hereditary peerage. As the weight of
business in the upper house would principally
170.72 upon the created peers, and as they

11 nardly arrive at that dignity without saving previously acquired great civil or military reputation, the consideration they would enjoy would be little inferior to that of the other part of the aristocracy. When the noblease of nature are fairly opposed to the noblesse created by political institutions, there is little fear that the former should suffer by the comparison.

If the clergy are suffered to sit in the lower house, the exclusion of the episcopacy from the upper house is of less importance: but, in some part of the legislative bodies, the inter

A ost sensible and valuable law, banishing gallantry and chivalry from cabinets, and preventing the amiab.e antics of grave statesmen.

The most useless and offensive tumour in the body politie, is the titled son of a great man whose merit has placed him in the peerage. The name, face, and perhaps the pension, remain. The dæmon is gone; or there is a light flavour from the cask, but it is empty.

We are surprised that M. Neckar should attempt to build any strong argument upon the durability of opinions in nations that are about to undergo, or that have recently undergone, great political changes. What opinion was there in favour of a republic in 1780? Or against it in 1794? Or, what opinion is there now in favour of it in 1802? Is not the tide of opinions, at this moment, in France, setting back with a strength equal to its flow? and is there not reason to presume, that, for some time to come, their ancient institutions may be adored with as much fury as they were de. stroyed? If opinion can revive in favour of kings (and M. Neckar allows it may), why not in favour of nobles? It is true their property is in the hands of other persons; and the whole of that species of proprietors will exert themselves to the utmost to prevent a restoration so pernicious to their interests. The obstacle is certainly of a very formidable nature. But why this weight of property, so weak a weapon of defence to its ancient, should be deemed so irresistible in the hands of its present possessors, we are at a loss to conceive; unless, indeed, it be supposed, that antiquity of possession diminishes the sense of right and the vigour of retention; and that men will struggle harder to keep what they have acquired only yesterday, than that which they have possessed, by themselves or their ancestors, for six centuries.

In France, the inferiority of the price of revolutionary lands to others, is immense. Of the former species, church land is considerably dearer than the forfeited estates of emigrants. Whence the difference of price, but from the estimated difference of security? Can any fact display more strongly the state of public opinion with regard to the probability of a future resto ration of these estates, either partial or total' and can any circumstance facilitate the execu tion of such a project more than the general belief that it will be executed? M. Neckar allows, that the impediments to the formation of a republic are very serious; but thinks they would all yield to the talents and activity of Buonaparte, if he were to dedicate himself to

* The parochial clergy are as much unrepresented in the English Parliament as they are in the Parliament of Brobdignag. The bishops make just what laws they please, and the bearing they may have on the happiness of the clergy at large never for one moment comes intu the serious consideration of Parliament.

the superintendence of such a government | rience, they are liable to tumult, to jealousy, to during the period of its infancy: of course, collision of powers, and to every evil to which therefore, he is to suppose the same power men are exposed, who are desirous of preserv dedicated to the formation of an hereditary ing a great good, without knowing how to set monarchy: or his parallel of difficulties is un-about it. In an old established system of liberty, just, and his preference irrational. Buonaparte could represent the person of a monarch, during his life, as well as he could represent the executive of a republic; and if he could overcome the turbulence of electors, to whom freedom was new, he could appease the jealousy that his generals would entertain of the returning nobles. Indeed, without such powerful intervention, this latter objection does not appear to us to be by any means insuperable. If the history of our own restoration were to be acted over again in France, and royalty and aristocracy brought back by the military successor of Buonaparte, it certainly could not be done without a very liberal distribution of favours among the great leaders of the army.

like our own, the encroachments which one department of the state makes on any other, are slow, and hardly intentional; the political feel. ings and the constitutional knowledge which every Englishman possesses, create a public voice, which tends to secure the tranquillity of the whole. Amid the crude sentiments and new-born precedents of sudden liberty, the crown might destroy the commons, or the commons the crown, almost before the people had formed any opinion of the nature of their contention. A nation grown free in a single day, is a child born with the limbs and the vigour of a man, who would take a drawn sword for his rattle, and set the house in a blaze, that he might chuckle over the splendour.

Why can factious eloquence produce such limited effects in this country? Partly because we are accustomed to it, and know how to ap

Jealousy of the executive is one feature of a republic; in consequence, that government is clogged with a multiplicity of safeguards and restrictions, which render it unfit for investi-preciate it. We are acquainted with popular gating complicated details, and managing extensive relations with vigour, consistency, and despatch. A republic, therefore, is better fitted for a little state than a large one.

A love of equality is another very strong principle in a republic; therefore it does not tolerate hereditary honour or wealth; and all the effect produced upon the minds of the people by this factitious power is lost, and the government weakened; but, in proportion as the government is less able to command, the people should be more willing to obey; therefore a republic is better suited to a moral than an immoral people.

A people who have recently experienced great evils from the privileged orders and from monarchs, love republican forms so much, that the warmth of their inclination supplies, in some degree, the defect of their institutions. Immediately, therefore, upon the destruction of despotism, a republic may be preferable to a limited monarchy.

assemblies; and the language of our Parlia ment produces the effect it ought upon public opinion, because long experience enables us to conjecture the real motives by which men are actuated; to separate the vehemence of party spirit from the language of principle and truth; and to discover whom we can trust, and whom we cannot. The want of all this, and of much more than this, must retard, for a very long period, the practical enjoyment of liberty in France, and present very serious obstacles to her prosperity; obstacles little dreamed of by men who seem to measure the happiness and future grandeur of France by degrees of longitude and latitude, and who believe she might acquire liberty with as much facility as she could acquire Switzerland or Naples.

M. Neckar's observations on the finances of

France, and on finance in general, are useful, entertaining, and not above the capacity of every reader. France, he says, at the beginning of 1781, had 438 millions of revenue; and, at present 540 millions. The state paid, in 1781, about 215 millions in pensions, the interest of perpetual debts, and debts for life. It pays, at present, 80 millions in interests and pensions; and owes about 12 millions for anticipations on the public revenue. A considera

And yet, though narrowness of territory, purity of morals, and recent escape from despotism, appear to be the circumstances which most strongly recommend a republic, M. Neckar proposes it to the most numerous and the most profligate people in Europe, who are disgusted with the very name of liberty, from the incredible share of the increase of the revenue is ble evils they have suffered in pursuit of it.

Whatever be the species of free government adopted by France, she can adopt none without the greatest peril. The miserable dilemma in which men living under bad governments are placed, is, that, without a radical revolution, they may never be able to gain liberty at all; and, with it, the attainment of liberty appears to be attended with almost insuperable difficulties. To call upon a nation, on a sudden, totally destitute of such knowledge and experience, to perform all the manifold functions of a free constitution, is to entrust valuable, delicate, and abstruse mechanism, to the rudest skill and the grossest ignorance. Public acts may confer liberty; but experience only can teach a people to use it; and, till they have gained that expe

raised upon the conquered countries; and the people are liberated from tithes, corvées, and the tax on salt. This, certainly, is a magnificent picture of finance. The best informed people at Paris, who would be very glad to consider it as a copy from life, dare not contend that it is so. At least, we sincerely ask pardon of M. Neckar, if our information as to this point be not correct: but we believe he is generally considered to have been misled by the public financial reports.

In addition to the obvious causes which keep the interest of money so high in France, M. Neckar states one which we shall present to our readers :

66 There is one means for the establishment of credit," he says, "equally important with

the others which I have stated-a sentiment of with her credit, and measured the period of her respect for morals, sufficiently diffused to over-existence by the depreciation of her assignats. awe the government, and intimidate it from Whereas, France was never more powerful treating with bad faith any solemn engagements than when she was totally unable to borrow a contracted in the name of the state. It is this single shilling in the whole circumference of respect for morals which seems at present to have dis-Europe, and when her assignats were not worth appeared? a respect which the Revolution has the paper on which they were stamped. destroyed, and which is unquestionably one of the firmest supports of national faith."

CATTEAU, TABLEAU DES ETATS DANOIS.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1803.]

THE object of this book is to exhibit a pic- when he comes to the exportation of horses ture of the kingdom of Denmark, under all its from the duchy of Holstein, we learn that social relations, of politics, statistics, science," these animals are dragged from the bosom of morals, manners, and every thing which can influence its character and importance, as a free and independent collection of human beings.

their peaceable and modest country, to hear, in foreign regions, the sound of the warlike trum pet; to carry the combatant amid the hostile ranks; to increase the éclat of some pompous procession; or drag, in gilded car, some

We are sorry to be compelled to notice these untimely effusions, especially as they may lead to a suspicion of the fidelity of the work; of which fidelity, from actual examination of many of the authorities referred to, we have not the most remote doubt. Mr. Catteau is to be depended upon as securely as any writer, going over such various and extensive ground, can ever be depended upon. He is occasionally guilty of some trifling inaccuracies; but what he advances is commonly derived from the most indisputable authorities; and he has condensed together a mass of information, which will render his book the most accessible and valuable road of knowledge, to those who are desirous of making any re searches respecting the kingdom of Den mark.

This book is, upon the whole, executed with great diligence and good sense. Some sub-favourite of fortune." jects of importance are passed over, indeed, with too much haste; but if the publication had exceeded its present magnitude, it would soon have degenerated into a mere book of reference, impossible to be read, and fit only, like a dictionary, for the purposes of occasional appeal: It would not have been a picture presenting us with an interesting epitome of the whole; but a typographical plan, detailing, with minute and fatiguing precision, every trifling circumstance, and every subordinate feature. We should be far from objecting to a much more extended and elaborate performance than the present; because those who read, and those who write, are now so numerous, that there is room enough for varieties and modifications of the same subject: but information of this nature, conveyed in a form and in a size adapted to continuous reading, Denmark, since the days of piracy, has gains in surface what it loses in depth,-and hardly been heard of out of the Baltic. Mar gives general notions to many, though it can-garet, by the union of Calmar, laid the foundanot afford all the knowledge which a few have it in their power to acquire, from the habits of more patient labour, and more profound research.

tion of a monarchy, which (could it have been preserved by hands as strong as those which created it) would have exercised a powerful influence upon the destinies of Europe, and This work, though written at a period when have strangled, perhaps in the cradle, the inenthusiasm or disgust had thrown most men's fant force of Russia. Denmark, reduced to minds off their balance, is remarkable, upon her ancient bounds by the patriotism and the whole, for sobriety and moderation. The talents of Gustavus Vasa, has never since observations, though seldom either strikingly been able to emerge into notice by her own ingenious or profound, are just, temperate, and natural resources, or the genius of her minisalways benevolent. We are so far from per-ters and her monarchs. During that period, ceiving any thing like extravagance in Mr. Sweden has more than once threatened to give Catteau, that we are inclined to think he is laws to Europe; and, headed by Charles and occasionally too cautious for the interests of Gustavus, has broke out into chivalrous entertruth; that he manages the court of Den-prises, with an heroic valour, which merited mark with too much delicacy; and exposes, by distant and scarcely perceptible touches, that which it was his duty to have brought out boldly and strongly. The most disagreeable circumstance in the style of the book is, the author's compliance with that irresistible avidity of his country to declaim upon common-place subjects. He goes on, mingling bucolic details and sentimental effusions, melting and measuring, crying and calculating, in a manner which is very bad, if it is poetry, and worse if it is prose. In speaking of the mode of cultivating potatoes, he cannot avoid calling the potato a modest vegetable: and

wiser objects, and greater ultimate success. The spirit of the Danish nation has, for the last two or three centuries, been as little car. ried to literature or to science, as to war. They have written as little as they have done With the exception of Tycho Brahé and a volume of shells, there is hardly a Danish book, or a Danish writer, known five miles from the Great Belt. It is not sufficient to say, that there are many authors read and admired in Denmark: there are none that have passed the Sound, none that have had energy enough to force themselves into the circulation of Europe, to extort universal admiration, and live, without the aid of municipal praise, and local *Tableaux des Etats Danois. Par JEAN PIERRE CAT- approbation. From the period, however, of the

TEAU. 3 tomes. 1802. à Paris.

first of the Bernstorffs, Denmark has made a