us-'The pressure of the external atmos- | without the assistance of this casual fit of phere overcomes that of the rarefied air in unaccountable insanity. the cylinder; this circumstance, without In speaking thus, we fully bear in mind doubt, contributes to the phenomenon ; but the wild and visionary speculations which its immediate cause is, that nature abhors a were so common in France at the time of vacuum! If Mr. Alison means, by the the Revolution. But we cannot see the ne'spirit of innovation,' that natural wish for cessity of referring these delusions to inredress which is the consequence of intol- scrutable causes. No one will deny that a erable suffering, then the sentence we have frantic spirit of innovation did exist in quoted, besides being a truism in itself, is France at that period;-the question is, incorrect in its application; for that spirit whether it originated in natural resentmust have been an intermediate, not a col- ment or spontaneous frenzy—whether, in lateral cause of the Revolution. But this short, the nation was driven mad, or went he does not mean; for it would be absurd mad of its own accord. The latter, as we to call so rational a desire an inscrutable have seen, is Mr. Alison's opinion; and frenzy. It is therefore clear that he speaks this opinion induces him, as well it may, of a spirit of innovation,' wholly uncon- to fear that the feelings which convulsed nected with existing inconveniences-a France half a century since, may be awaspirit against which the wisest institutions kened in free and well governed councannot guard, and which is almost as like- tries by the progress of constitutional rely to break forth in a free, as in an oppress- form. To us nothing can seem more natued nation. We shall permit ourselves a ral than that men, who knew no more of few observations upon this theory; be- political liberty than a blind man knows of cause, briefly as it is here expressed, it ap-light, should form an extravagant notion of pears to be the text of most of his mourn its blessings. All our ideas of human naful and discouraging speculations both up- ture would have been confounded, if we had on the future destiny of France, and the found the French Jacobins recommending progress of Reform throughout the world. the constitution of 1789 in the calm and In the first place, the remark naturally rational language in which Hampden might occurs, that admitting the possibility of the have spoken for the abolition of the Starexplanation, we do not want its assistance. Chamber, or Lord Somers for the Bill of Mr. Alison has ably shown that the worst Rights. It is certain that nations, like infollies and excesses of the Revolution may dividuals, are sometimes captivated by debe fully accounted for by the ordinary molusive theories. But we appeal to the comtives of human conduct. Why then have mon sense of our readers whether any rearecourse to 'causes inscrutable to human wisdom? Why call down a divinity, when the knot can be disentangled by mortal skill? Assume, if you will, that nations, like elephants, are subject to periodical accesses of frenzy; but why apply your theory to such a case where every provocation existed to justify an outbreak of natural resentment? Nothing can, by Mr. Alison's account, be more evident, than that the po-homme-de-lettres risked his life as a demalitical privileges of the noblesse, the oppressions of the feudal law, and the ruinous state of the finances, must have been in 1789 sources of daily and hourly annoyance to the great majority of the French nation. Most of them, even in the plebeian class, must, in the existing state of intelligence, have felt that their property had been injured, and their prospects in life disap-vées and feudal services? pointed, by the accident of their birth. And surely they must have been the meekest race in existence, if the severity of their sufferings, and the consciousness of their strength, and the knowledge of the impotence of their oppressors, would all have been insufficient to urge them to violence,

sonable being ever abandoned substantial comforts, or confronted real dangers, with no better motives. Can it be conceived that empty dreams about universal equality, and an age of innocence, would have nerved peaceable men to defy the cannon of the Bastile? Would the mob have massacred good and popular rulers for the sake of resembling Brutus and Timoleon? When an

gogue, was it to realize his fancies of republics and democracies, or to escape from hopeless poverty and obscurity? When a peasant set fire to the chateau of Monseigneur, was it because he admired the eloquence of Danton or Desmoulins, or because he found it easier to revolt at once, than to stay at home and be ruined by cor

At the conclusion of his first chapter, Mr. Alison has explained, with admirable sense and moderation, the causes of the sanguinary violence which distinguished the French Revolution. We are not sure that his remarks upon the various crimes which he has to relate, are always characterized by

the same rational calmness; but he has here In speaking of the Egyptian expedition, he at least recorded his deliberate opinion, that says 'They' (the French soldiers) 'not the atrocities of the French populace were only considered the Christian faith as an the natural and inevitable fruit of the op- entire fabrication, but were for the most pression which they had suffered. We have part ignorant of its very elements. Lavalong ago expressed our belief, that the ex-lette has recorded that hardly one of them cesses of every popular convulsion will ge- had ever been in a church, and that in Panerally be proportioned to the misgovern-lestine they were ignorant even of the names ment which occasioned it. We are aware of the holiest places in sacred history.'that this has been eagerly disputed; but without pausing to discuss particular examples, we submit that the general rule approaches very nearly to a truism. Will not the violence of the popular party in a revolution be in proportion to their exasperation and their political ignorance? And will not their exasperation be in proportion to their sufferings, and their political ignorance to their inexperience in the use of political power?

(iii. 419.) This was in 1799, only ten years after the first symptoms of popular innovation. Here, then, were 30,000 full-grown men, collected promiscuously from all parts of France-many of them well educated, and all of sound mind and body-who appear to have felt about as much interest in the religion of their ancestors as in that of Brahma or Confucius. And yet the great majority of this army must have been born fifteen or twenty years before the first out

youngest of them must have passed their childhood entirely under the ancient régime. There cannot, surely, be a stronger proof that, long before the royal authority was shaken, the great mass of the French nation had become such thorough infidels as to be almost ignorant of the very existence of Christianity.

Of course, no one will deny that the ex-break of the Revolution; and the very actness of the proportion may be disturbed by various causes. The influence of accidental circumstances, the authority of particular classes, even the personal character of individuals, may have the greatest effect in exciting or restraining popular revenge. We need not remind our readers of the various unhappy coincidences which combined to increase the natural resentment of Our limits will not permit us to discuss the French nation;-of the foolish weak-with Mr. Alison the great question, whether ness, and more foolish insolence of the the French Revolution was on the whole a court, the unprincipled character of the benefit, or a disaster to mankind. Though popular leaders, the want of moral and reli- some passages in the earlier part of his Hisgious feeling among the lower classes. tory seem to bear a more hopeful interpreStill, we do not comprehend the argument tation, it is clear that upon the whole he which attributes the crimes and impieties of considers it as an event most fatal to France, that unhappy time to the demoralizing ef- and most menacing to the rest of Europe. fects of the Revolution itself. Sudden anar- The following are, in his opinion, its most chy may bring evil passions and infidel opi- pernicious consequences, as regards France nions to light; but we do not understand alone-'The national morality has been dehow it can bring them into existence. Men stroyed in the citizens of towns, in whose do not insult their religion and massacre hands alone political power is vested.— their fellow-creatures, simply because it is There is no moral strength or political enin their power. The desire to do so must ergy in the country. France has previously exist, and in France we have fallen into a subjection to Paris, to which every proof that it did exist. We might there is nothing comparable in European give innumerable instances of the cruel and history. The Prætorian guards of the cavindictive temper displayed from the most pital rule the state. Commercial ancient times by the lower classes in France. opulence and habits of sober judgment have In the Jacquerie, in the civil wars of the been destroyed, never to revive. A thirst Bourguignons and Armagnacs, and in the for excitement everywhere prevails, and seditions of the League and the Fronde, general selfishness disgraces the nation. they constantly displayed the ferocity na- Religion has never resumed its sway over turally excited by slavery and oppression. the influential classes. . And the Their scorn for Christianity, though more general depravity renders indispensable a recently acquired, had become, long before powerful centralized and military governthe Revolution of 1789, as inveterate as ment. In what respect,' he asks, 'does this their desire for revenge. We shall give, in state of things differ from the institutions Mr. Alison's own words, one very singular of China or the Byzantine empire ?'—(x. proof of the extent to which it prevailed. 548.) In what respect, we prefer to in

quire, does it differ from the institutions of worst that ever occurred. Not only did France before the Revolution? We are no the popular movement result in atrocities, implicit admirers of the present French go- but the exhaustion which followed led to vernment; but we appeal to Mr. Alison's the usurpation of Napoleon and the wars own statements, whether it is not infinitely of the empire. Three millions and a half of preferable to that of Louis XVI.? Still less Frenchmen, and a prodigious number of are we blind to the many and serious faults foreigners, perished, who but for the Revoof the present generation of Frenchmen; lution and its consequences might have but we are at a loss to conceive how any ended their days in peace. Human ingereasonable being, who compares the second nuity, in short, can scarcely imagine means revolution with the first, can deny the supe- by which a greater amount of violence and riority of the Frenchman of 1830 to the bloodshed could have been crowded into a Frenchman of 1793-that is, to the French-quarter of a century. Still we are perman of the ancient régime, when seen in his suaded that an escape from this fiery trial true colors. But, without stopping to would have been dearly purchased by the argue so extensive a question in detail, we must confess that we should be glad to hear from Mr. Alison a distinct answer to a few such plain questions as the following: Would Louis-Philippe, though he were the most depraved and violent man in Europe, dare to imitate the orgies of the regency, or the tyranny of Louis XV.? Are life, property, and honor, less safe than in the time of the Bastile, and the Parc aux Cerfs? Is the present condition of the peasantry worse than it was under the feudal law? Have the middle classes less political power than in 1742? Is France less prosperous at home, or less respected abroad, than in 1763 or 1783? However common infidelity may unhappily be, is religion less respected than in the days of Voltaire? However low the national standard of morality, was it higher when Madame de Parabére, or Madame du Berri, was the virtual ruler of France? All the declamation in the world about Oriental tyrannies, and centralized despotisms, will not get rid of these simple tests; and we are at a loss to imagine how even Mr. Alison could reply to one of them in the affirmative.

If we are right on this important point, we shall not allow the crimes of the Revolution, or the sufferings which it caused, to prevent us from considering it a beneficial change. In saying this we trust that we shall not be understood as wishing to palliate the excesses of the popular party, or to undervalue the evils inseparable from all popular convulsions. A revolution, at its best, is a painful and perilous remedy; at its worst, it is the severest trial which a nation can undergo. If we are inclined, notwithstanding, to consider such trials as benefits, it is because we believe that they seldom occur, except in cases where hopeless slavery and irreparable decay are the only alternatives. There is no doubt that the French Revolution was an instance of the worst kind;-perhaps it was the very

continuance of the ancient régime for another century. The evils of violence and bloodshed, dreadful as they are, cannot be compared to those of oppressive institutions. Violence and bloodshed are necessarily partial, but oppressive institutions are universal. It is impossible to guillotine a whole nation; it is impossible to enrol a whole nation as conscripts; but it is easy to make a whole nation miserable by disabilities and exactions. Even under the Reign of Terror, each individual citizen must have felt that there were many hundred chances to one in favor of his escape from denunciation; but no peasant had a hope of escaping the tyranny of the feudal customs. Violence and bloodshed are in their nature transitory; but oppressive institutions may be perpetual. Crimes which spring from passion soon exhaust themselves; but crimes which spring from habit may continue for ever. The Reign of Terror was over in fourteen months; but the ancient régime might have subsisted until its effects had reduced France to the decrepitude of China or Constantinople. Violence and bloodshed produce merely suffering; but oppressive institutions produce degradation also. A French peasant might retain the pride and spirit of a free man, though he knew that the next day he might be dragged before a revolutionary tribunal, or hurried off to join the army in Spain or Russia. But a French peasant who had been placed in the stocks for want of due servility to his seigneur, who had seen his son sent to the galleys for destroying a partridge's eggs, who knew that the honor of his family had been outraged by some

*Mr. Alison enumerates the victims of the Re

volution, including those of the civil war in La
Vendée, at 1,022,351 souls; and the soldiers who
perished in the wars of the Empire, at 2,200,400.-
(See vi. 410, ii. 400.) This does not include those
who fell at Waterloo, in the battles of the revolu-
tionary contest, and in the various naval actions of
the war.

licentious noble, such a man could not but | Fox was originally wrong in his opinion of feel himself a debased and unhappy slave. the French Revolution, because he lived to The sufferings of the Revolution, in short, see its benefits destroyed for a time by the unwere to the sufferings of the ancient régime expected interference of a powerful usurper. as the plague of London to the malaria of a We are at a loss to comprehend the pretropical climate. The one was a temporary cise moral lesson which Mr. Alison would though overwhelming blow, the other a lead his readers to draw from the French wasting pestilence-the perpetual source Revolution. Nor, to say truth, is it easy to of terror and misery to every successive conceive how he can find any instruction at generation existing within its influence. all in an event which he believes to have Mr. Alison's opinions upon the French originated in mysterious insanity, and to Revolution induce him to speak with trium- have terminated in hopeless slavery. It is phant admiration of the foresight shown by true that we find in his work plenty of soMr. Pitt and Mr. Burke upon that subject, norous declamation about the fatal career and with condescending compassion of the of guilt, the short-lived triumphs of wickedblindness of Mr. Fox. Posterity,' he as-ness, and the inevitable laws of retribution. sures us, 'will not search the speeches of But we know nothing more annoying to the Mr. Fox for historic truth, nor pronounce reader than this sort of rhetorical amplificahim gifted with any extraordinary political tion, upon subjects which require to be dispenetration. On the contrary, it must re- cussed with the most rigid precision of cord with regret that the light which broke which language is capable. No doubt Roupon Mr. Burke at the outset of the Revo- bespierre was a wicked man, and was as lution, and on Mr. Pitt before its principal miserable as wicked men generally are. atrocities began, only shone on his fervent No doubt Napoleon was rash and ambitious, mind when descending to the grave.'-(v. and owed his downfall to his own pride and 720.) That, we presume, will depend upon recklessness. No doubt the French poputhe view taken by posterity of the events in lace were madmen and ruffians, and made question. It is impossible to deny that Mr. themselves as wretched by their crimes as Burke appreciated the character of the then they deserved to be. But all this is not existing generation of Frenchmen more the sort of instruction which we expect truly than Mr. Fox. But if future ages see from an elaborate history of the Revolution. in the French Revolution a shock which, We have searched Mr. Alison's work for a dreadful as it was, saved France from hope- calm dispassionate discussion of the means less and lingering decay, they will scarcely by which the evils of the ancient governdeny their admiration to the statesman who ment might have been removed, and yet discerned its true character; merely be the excesses of the Revolution prevented; cause his sanguine and generous nature led and we have found ourselves again and him to think too favorably of the indivi-again baffled and bewildered by a mazy duals who conducted it. The physical evils tissue of words. No reasonable being who inflicted by the French Revolution are alreads Mr Alison's narrative requires to ready almost effaced, and their last traces be lectured about the horrors of anarchy. will vanish with the present generation. Every body knows that anarchy is a treBut its moral consequences may endure for ages, and it is by their ultimate character that the comparative wisdom of the rival statesmen must be tried.

It may be true that Mr. Fox was induced, late and reluctantly, to despair of French liberty. But it was not the turbulence of the Revolution which changed his opinions. It was the forcible interruption, not the natural tendency, of its progress, which caused his despondency. He had foreseen that the excesses of the French people were incapable of being a permanent evil; but no human skill could enable him to foresee the downfall of Napoleon. It would be unfair to blame a physician for ignorance in recommending sea-bathing, because his patient happened to be carried off by a shark; and it is equally unjust to assert that Mr.

mendous evil; but was it an avoidable evil? was it a greater evil than continued subjection was there no middle course by which the dangers of both might have been avoided? These are questions which we cannot discover any direct attempt to resolve. If Mr. Alison were to see a drover trampled to death by an ox, would not his first reflection naturally be upon the danger of over-driving oxen, and the best means of keeping them in order? And would he not think that the bystanders had lost their senses if they began to dilate upon the shocking nature of the accident, as a proof that it is the duty of over-driven oxen to keep their temper?

Men are wisely forbidden to do evil that good may ensue; but they are not forbid den to admire the merciful arrangement

of Providence, by which the sin and folly of the happiest effects. Every concession individuals are so often made the source of which is calculated to increase this species blessings to mankind. We feel as much of liberty, is comparatively safe in all ages aversion as Mr. Alison for the cruelty and and in all places. But there is another injustice of the French Revolutionists; but principle, strong at all times, but especially we do not pronounce, as he does, that their to be dreaded in moments of excitement. crimes must bring ruin upon their innocent This is the principle of democratic ambiposterity. We see neither sense, nor jus- tion ;-the desire of exercising the powers tice, nor Christian principle, in his theory of sovereignty, and of sharing in the govof a law of retribution not confined to the ernment of the state. This is the dangerguilty parties. Let Mr. Alison, if he will, ous principle; the desire, not of exercising regard the French Revolution as 'the second industry without molestation, but of exertrevolt of Lucifer, the prince of the morning power without control.'-(i. 174.) The ing.'-(x. 18.) We prefer to recognize in principles may certainly be said to be disits vicissitudes the same severe but merci- tinet; but they are so closely connected ful hand which employs earthquakes and that we scarcely see how one can exist tornadoes to dispel the pestilential stagnation of the physical atmosphere.