"No great state," says Hannibal, "can long remain quiet: if it ceases to have enemies abroad, it will find them at home—as powerful bodies resist all external attacks, but are wasted away by their own internal strength."[1] What a commentary on the words of the Carthaginian hero does the last year—The Year of Revolutions,—afford! What enthusiasm has it witnessed, what efforts engendered, what illusions dispelled, what misery produced! How bitterly have nations, as well as individuals, within its short bounds, learned wisdom by suffering—how many lessons has experience taught—how much agony has wickedness brought in its train. Among the foremost in all the periods of history, this memorable year will ever stand forth, a subject of undying interest to succeeding generations, a lasting beacon to mankind amidst the folly or insanity of future times. To it the young and the ardent will for ever turn, for the most singular scenes of social strife, the most thrilling incidents of private suffering: to it the aged will point as the most striking warning of the desperate effects of general delusion, the most unanswerable demonstration of the moral government of the world.

That God will visit the sins of the fathers upon the children was proclaimed to the Israelites amidst the thunders of Mount Sinai, and has been felt by every succeeding generation of men. But it is not now upon the third or the fourth generation that the punishment of transgression falls—it is felt in its full bitterness by the transgressors themselves. The extension of knowledge, the diffusion of education, the art of printing, the increased rapidity of travelling, the long duration of peace in consequence of the exhaustion of former wars, have so accelerated the march of events, that what was slowly effected in former times, daring several successive generations, by the gradual development of national passions, is now at once brought to maturity by the fervent spirit which is generally awakened, and the vehement passions which are everywhere brought into action.

Everything now goes on at the gallop. There is a railway speed in the stirring of the mind, not less than in the movement of the bodies of men. The social and political passions have acquired such intensity, and been so widely diffused, that their inevitable results are almost immediately produced. The period of seed-time and harvest has become as short in political as it is in agricultural labour. A single year brings its appropriate fruits to maturity in the moral as in the physical world. Eighty years elapsed in Rome from the time when the political passions were first stirred by Tiberius Gracchus, before its unruly citizens were finally subdued by the art, or decimated by the cruelty of Octavius. England underwent six years of civil war and suffering, before the ambition and madness of the Long Parliament were expelled by the purge of Pride, or crushed by the sword of Cromwell: twelve years elapsed between the convocation of the States-general in 1789, and the extinction of the license of the French Revolution by the arm of Napoleon. But, on this occasion, in one year, all, in the meantime at least, has been accomplished. Ere the leaves, which unfolded in spring amidst the overthrow of thrones, and the transports of revolutionists over the world, had fallen in autumn, the passions which had convulsed mankind were crushed for the time, and the triumphs of democracy were arrested. A terrible reaction had set in; experience of suffering had done its work; and swift as the shades of night before the rays of the ascending sun, had disappeared the ferment of revolution before the aroused indignation of the uncorrupted part of mankind. The same passions may again arise; the same delusions again spread, as sin springs up afresh in successive generations of men; but we know the result. They will, like the ways of the unrighteous, be again crushed.

So rapid was the succession of revolutions, when the tempest assailed the world last spring, that no human power seemed capable of arresting it; and the thoughtful looked on in mournful and impotent silence, as they would have done on the decay of nature or the ruin of the world. The Pope began the career of innovation: decrees of change issued from the Vatican; and men beheld with amazement the prodigy of the Supreme Pontiff—the head of the unchangeable Church—standing forth as the leader of political reform. Naples quickly caught the flame: a Sicilian revolution threatened to sever one-half of their dominions from the Neapolitan Bourbon; and internal revolt seemed to render his authority merely nominal in his own metropolis. Paris, the cradle in every age of new ideas, and the centre of revolutionary action, next felt the shock: a reform banquet was prepared as the signal for assembling the democratic forces; the national guard, as usual, failed at the decisive moment: the King of the Barricades quailed before the power which had created him; the Orleans dynasty was overthrown, and France delivered over to the dreams of the Socialists and the ferocity of the Red Republicans. Prussia soon shared the madness: the population of Berlin, all trained to arms, according to the custom of that country, rose against the government; the king had not energy enough to permit his faithful troops to act with the vigour requisite to uphold the throne against such assailants, and the monarchy of Frederick the Great was overthrown. Austria, even, could not withstand the contagion: neither its proud nobility, nor its light-hearted sensual people, nor its colossal army, nor its centuries of glory, could maintain the throne in its moment of peril. The Emperor was weak, the citizens of Vienna were infatuated; and an insurrection, headed by the boys at the university and the haberdashers' apprentices in the streets, overturned the imperial government, and drove the Emperor to seek refuge in the Tyrol. All Germany caught the flame: the dreams of a few hot-headed enthusiasts and professors seemed to prevail alike over the dictates of wisdom and the lessons of experience; and, amidst the transports of millions the chimera or German unity seemed about to be realised by the sacrifice of all its means of independence. The balance of power in Europe appeared irrevocably destroyed by the breaking up of its central and most important powers,—and England, in the midst of the general ruin, seemed rocking to its foundation. The Chartists were in raptures, the Irish rebels in ecstasy: threatening meetings were held in every town in Great Britain; armed clubs were organised in the whole south and west of Ireland; revolution was openly talked of in both islands, and the close of harvest announced as the time when the British empire was to be broken up, and Anglian and Hibernian republics established, in close alliance with the great parent democracy in France. Amidst such extraordinary and unprecedented convulsions, it was with difficulty that a few courageous or far-seeing minds preserved their equilibrium; and even those who were least disposed to despair of the fortunes of the species, could see no end to the succession of disasters with which the world was menaced but in a great exertion of the renovating powers of nature, similar to that predicted, in a similar catastrophe, for the material world, by the imagination of the poet.

But the destiny of man, not less than that of the material world, is balanced action and reaction, not restoration from ruin. Order is preserved in a way which the imagination of the poet could not have conceived. Even in the brief space which has elapsed since the convulsions began in Italy in January last, the reality and ceaseless action of the preserving laws of nature have been demonstrated. The balance is preserved in social life by contending passions and interests, as in the physical world by opposite forces, under circumstances when, to all human appearance, remedy is impossible and hope extinguished. The orbit of nations is traced out by the Wisdom of Providence not less clearly than that of the planets; there are centripetal and centrifugal forces in the moral as well as in the material world. As much as the vehement passions, the selfish desires, the inexperienced zeal, the expanding energy, the rapacious indigence, the mingled virtues and vices of man, lead at stated periods to the explosions of revolution,—do the desire of tranquillity, the interests of property, the horror at cruelty, the lessons of experience, the force of religion, the bitterness of suffering, reinduce the desire of order, and restore the influence of its organ, government. If we contemplate the awful force of the expansive powers which, issuing from the great mass of central heat, find vent in the fiery channels of the volcano, and have so often rent asunder the solid crust of the earth, we may well tremble to think that we stand suspended, as it were, over such an abyss, and that at no great distance beneath our feet the elements of universal conflagration are to be found.[3] But, strong as are the expansive powers of nature, the coercive are still stronger. The ocean exists to bridle with its weight the fiery gulf; the arch of the earth has been solidly constructed by its Divine architect; and the only traces we now discover, in most parts of this globe, of the yet raging war of the elements, are the twisted strata, which mark, as it were, the former writhings of matter in the terrible grasp of its tormentors, or the splintered pinnacles of mountains, which add beauty to the landscape, or the smiling plains, which bring happiness to the abodes of man. It is the same in the moral world. Action and reaction are the law of mind as well as matter, and the equilibrium of social life is preserved by the opposite tendency of the interests which are brought into collision, and the counter-acting force of the passions which are successively awakened by the very convulsions which seem to menace society with dissolution.

A year has not elapsed since the revolutionary earthquake began to heave in Italy, since the volcano burst forth in Paris; and how marvellous is the change which already has taken place in the state of Europe! The star of Austria, at first defeated, and apparently about to be extinguished in Italy, is again in the ascendant. Refluent from the Mincio to the Ticino, her armies have again entered Milan,—the revolutionary usurpation of Charles Emanuel has been checked almost as soon as it commenced; and the revolutionary rabble of Lombardy and Tuscany has fled, as it was wont, before the bayonets of Germany. Radetzky has extinguished revolution in northern Italy. If it still lingers in the south of the peninsula, it is only because the strange and tortuous policy of France and England has interfered to arrest the victorious arms of Naples on the Sicilian shores. Paris has been the theatre of a dreadful struggle, blood has flowed in torrents in its streets, slaughter unheard-of stained its pavements, but order has in the end prevailed over anarchy. A dynasty has been subverted, but the Red Republicans have been defeated, more generals have perished in a conflict of three days than at Waterloo; but the Faubourg St Antoine has been subdued, the socialists have been overthrown, the state of siege has been proclaimed; and, amidst universal suffering, anguish, and woe, with three hundred thousand persons out of employment in Paris, and a deficit of £20,000,000 in the income of the year, the dreams of equality have disappeared in the reality of military despotism. It is immaterial whether the head of the government is called a president, a dictator, or an emperor—whether the civic crown is worn by a Napoleon or a Cavaignac—in either case the ascendant of the army is established, and France, after a brief struggle for a constitutional monarchy, has terminated, like ancient Rome, in an elective military despotism.

Frankfort has been disgraced by frightful atrocities. The chief seat of German unity and freedom has been stained by cruelties which find a parallel only in the inhuman usages of the American savages; but the terrible lesson has not been read in vain. It produced a reaction over the world; it opened the eyes of men to the real tendency and abominable iniquity of the votaries of revolution in Germany; and to the sufferings of the martyrs of revolutionary tortures on the banks of the Maine, the subsequent overthrow of anarchy in Vienna and Berlin is in a great degree to be ascribed. They roused the vacillating cabinets of Austria and Prussia—they sharpened the swords of Windischgratz and Jellachich—they nerved the souls and strengthened the arms of Brandenberg and Wrangel—they awakened anew the chord of honour and loyalty in the Fatherland. The national airs have been again heard in Berlin; Vienna has been regained after a desperate conflict; the state of siege has been proclaimed in both capitals; and order re-established in both monarchies, amidst an amount of private suffering and general misery—the necessary result of revolutions—which absolutely sickens the heart to contemplate. England has emerged comparatively unscathed from the strife; her time-honoured institutions have been preserved, her monarchy saved amidst the crash of nations. Queen Victoria is still upon the throne; our mixed constitution is intact; the dreams of the Chartists have been dispelled; the rebellion of the Irish rendered ridiculous; the loyalty of the great body of the people in Great Britain made manifest. The period of immediate danger is over; for the attack of the populace is like the spring of a wild beast—if the first onset fails, the savage animal slinks away into its den. General suffering indeed prevails, industry languishes, credit is all but destroyed, a woful deficiency of exports has taken place—but that is the inevitable result of popular commotions; and we are suffering, in part at least, under the effects of the insanity of nations less free and more inexperienced than ourselves. Though last, not least in the political lessons of this marvellous year, the papal government has been subverted—a second Rienzi has appeared in Rome; and the Supreme Pontiff, who began the movement, now a fugitive from his dominions, has exhibited a memorable warning to future ages, of the peril of commencing reforms in high places, and the impossibility of reconciling the Roman Catholic religion with political innovation.

But let it not be imagined that, because the immediate danger is over, and because military power has, after a fierce struggle, prevailed in the principal capitals of Europe, that therefore the ultimate peril is past, and that men have only to sit down, under the shadow of their fig-tree, to cultivate the arts and enjoy the blessings of peace. Such is not the destiny of man in any, least of all in a revolutionary age. We are rather on the verge of an era similar to that deplored by the poet:—

Who can tell the immeasurable extent of misery and wretchedness, of destruction of property among the rich, and ruin of industry among the poor, that must take place before the fierce passions, now so generally awakened, are allayed—before the visions of a virtuous republic by Lamartine, or the dreams of communism by Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin, or the insane ideas of the Frankfort enthusiasts have ceased to move mankind? The fire they have let loose will burn fiercely for centuries; it will alter the destiny of nations for ages; it will neither be quenched, like ordinary flames, by water, nor subdued, like the Greek fire, by vinegar: blood alone will extinguish its fury. The coming convulsions may well be prefigured from the past, as they have been recently drawn by the hand of a master:—"All around us, the world is convulsed by the agonies of great nations; governments which lately seemed likely to stand during ages, have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown. The proudest capitals of western Europe have streamed with civil blood. All evil passions—the thirst of gain and the thirst of vengeance—the antipathy of class to class, of race to race—have broken loose from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and anxiety have clouded the faces, and depressed the hearts of millions; trade has been suspended, and industry paralysed; the rich have become poor, and the poor poorer. Doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, to all domestic charity—doctrines which, if carried into effect, would in thirty years undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind, and would make the fairest provinces of France or Germany as savage as Guiana or Patagonia—have been avowed from the tribune, and defended by the sword. Europe has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, compared with whom the barbarians who marched under Attila or Alboin were enlightened and humane. The truest friends of the people have with deep sorrow owned, that interests more precious than any political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be necessary to sacrifice even liberty to save civilisation."[5]

It is now just a year since Mr Cobden announced, to an admiring and believing audience at Manchester, that the age of warfare had ceased; that the contests of nations had passed, like the age of the mastodon and the mammoth; that the steam-engine had caused the arms to drop from her hands, and the interests of free trade extinguished the rivalries of nations; and that nothing now remained but to sell our ships of war, disband our troops, cut twenty millions off our taxation, and set ourselves unanimously to the great work of cheapening everything, and underselling foreign competitors in the market of the world. Scarcely were the words spoken, when conflicts more dire, battles more bloody, dissensions more inextinguishable than had ever arisen from the rivalry of kings, or the ambition of ministers, broke out in almost every country of Europe. The social supplanted the national passions. Within the bosom of society itself, the volcano had burst forth. It was no longer general that was matched against general, as in the wars of Marlborough, nor nation that rose up against nation, as in those of Napoleon. The desire of robbery, the love of dominion, the lust of conquest, the passion for plunder, were directed to domestic acquisitions. Human iniquity reappeared in worse, because less suspected and more delusive colours. Robbery assumed the guise of philanthropy; spoliation was attempted, under colour of law; plunder was systematically set about, by means of legislative enactments. Revolution resumed its old policy—that of rousing the passions by the language of virtue, and directing them to the purposes of vice. The original devil was expelled; but straightway he returned with seven other devils, and the last state of the man was worse than the first. Society was armed against itself; the devastating passions burned in its own bosom; class rose against class, race against race, interest against interest. Capital fancied its interest was to be promoted by grinding down labour; labour, that its rights extended to the spoliation of capital. A more attractive object than the reduction of a city, or the conquest of a province, was presented to indigent cupidity. Easier conquests than over rival industry were anticipated by moneyed selfishness. The spoliation of the rich at their own door—the division of the property of which they were jealous, became the dream of popular ambition; the beating down of their own labourers by free-trade, the forcible reduction of prices by a contraction of the currency—the great object of the commercial aristocracy. War reassumed its pristine ferocity. In the nineteenth century, the ruthless maxim—VÆ victis! became the war-cry on both sides in the terrible civil war which burst forth in an age of general philanthropy. It may be conceived what passions must have been awakened, what terrors inspired, what indignation aroused by such projects. But though we have seen the commencement of the era of social conflicts, is there any man now alive who is likely to see its end?

Experience has now completely demonstrated the wisdom of the Allied powers, who placed the lawful monarchs of France on the throne in 1815, and the enormous error of the liberal party in France, which conspired with the republicans to overthrow the Bourbon dynasty in 1830. That fatal step has bequeathed a host of evils to Europe: it has loosened the authority of government in all countries; it has put the very existence of freedom in peril by the enormity of the calamities which it has brought in its train. All parties in France are now agreed that the period of the Restoration was the happiest, and the least corrupted, that has been known since the first Revolution. The republicans of the present day tell us, with a sigh, that the average budgets of the three last years of Charles X. were 900,000,000 francs, (£36,000,000;) that the expenditure was raised by Louis Philippe at once to 1500,000,000 francs, (£60,000,000;) and that under the Republic it will exceed 1800,000,000 francs, (£72,000,000.) There can be no doubt of the fact; and there can be as little, that if the Red Republicans had succeeded in the insurrection of June last, the annual expenditure would have increased to £100,000,000—or rather, a universal spoliation of property would have ensued. Louis Blanc has given the world, in his powerful historical work, a graphic picture of the universal corruption, selfishness, and immorality, in public and private life, which pervaded France during the reign of Louis Philippe.[6] Though drawn by the hand of a partisan, there can be no doubt that the picture is too faithful in most of its details, and exhibits an awful proof of the effects of a successful revolution. But the misery which Louis Blanc has so ably depicted, the corruptions he has brought to light, under the revolutionary monarchy, have been multiplied fourfold by those which have prevailed during the last year in the republic established by Louis Blanc, himself!

Paris, ever since the suppression of the great insurrection in June last, has been in such a state, that it is the most utter mockery to call it freedom. In truth, it is nothing but the most unmitigated military despotism. A huge statue of liberty is placed in the National Assembly; but at every six paces bayonets are to be seen, to remind the bystanders of the rule of the sword. "LibertÉ, EgalitÉ, FraternitÉ," meet the eye at every turn in the streets; but the Champs ElysÉes, the Place de GrÈve, the Carrousel, and Place VendÔme, are crowded with soldiers; and the Champ de Mars is white with tents, to cover part of the 40,000 regular troops which form the ordinary garrison of Paris. Universal freedom of discussion has been proclaimed by the constitution; but dozens of journals have been suppressed by the authority of the dictator; and imprisonment notoriously hangs over the head of every one who indulges in the freedom of discussion, which in England and America is universal. The state of siege has been raised, after having continued four months; but the military preparations for another siege continue with unabated vigour on both sides. The constitution has been adopted by a great majority in the Assembly; but the forts are all armed, and prepared to rain down the tempest of death on the devoted city. Universal suffrage is established; but menacing crowds are in the streets, threatening any one who votes against their favourite candidates. The Faubourg St Antoine, during the late election, was in a frightful state of agitation; infantry, cavalry, and artillery, were traversing the streets in all directions; and conflicts not less bloody than those of June last were anticipated in the struggle for the presidency, and prevented only by the presence of ninety thousand soldiers in the capital: a force greater than that which fought on either side at Austerlitz or Jena. It is evident that republican institutions, in such a state of society, are a mere name; and that supreme despotic power is really invested in France, as in ancient Rome under the emperors, in the nominee of a victorious body of soldiery. The PrÆtorian guards will dispose of the French as they did of the Roman diadem; and ere long, gratuities to the troops will perhaps be the passport to power in Paris, as they were in the Eternal City.

Nor have the social evils, which in France have followed in the wake of successful revolution, been less deplorable than the entire destruction of the rights of freemen and security of property which has ensued. To show that this statement is not overcharged, we extract from a noted liberal journal of Paris, La Reforme, of November 17, 1848, the following statement:—

"Property, manufactures, and commerce are utterly destroyed in Paris. Of the population of that great city, the capital of France, there are 300,000 individuals wanting the necessaries of life. One half at least of those earned from 3f. to 5f. a day previous to the revolution, and occupied a number of houses in the faubourgs. The proprietors of those houses receiving no rent, and having taxes and other charges to pay, are reduced to nearly as deep distress as their tenants. In the centre of Paris, the same distress exists under another form. The large and sumptuous apartments of the fashionable quarters were occupied before the revolution by wealthy proprietors, or by persons holding lucrative employments in the public offices, or by extensive manufacturers, but nearly all those have disappeared, and the few who remain have insisted upon such a reduction of rent that the proprietor does not receive one-half of the amount to which he is entitled. Should a proprietor of house property endeavour to raise a sum of money by a first mortgage, to defray his most urgent expenses, he finds it impossible to do so, even at a most exorbitant rate of interest. Those who possess ready money refuse to part with it, either through fear, or because they expect to purchase house property when it must be sold at 50 per cent less than the value."—La Reforme, November 17, 1848.

It is certainly a most remarkable thing, in the history of the aberrations of the human mind, that a system of policy which has produced, and is producing, such disastrous results—and, above all, which is inflicting such deadly and irreparable wounds on the interests of the poor, and the cause of freedom throughout the world—should have been, during the last eighteen years, the object of unceasing eulogy by the liberal party on both sides of the Channel; and that the present disastrous state of affairs, both in this country and on the Continent, is nothing more than the natural and inevitable result of the principles that party has everywhere laboured to establish. The revolution of 1830 was hailed with enthusiasm in this country by the whole liberal party: the Irish are not more enamoured now of the revolution of 1848, than the Whigs were, eighteen years ago, of that of 1830. The liberal government of England did all in their power to spread far and wide the glorious example. Flanders was attacked—an English fleet and French army besieged Antwerp; and, by a coalition of the two powers, a revolutionary throne was established in Belgium, and the king of the Netherlands prevented from re-establishing the kingdom guaranteed to him by all the powers of Europe. The Quadruple Alliance was formed to revolutionise Spain and Portugal; a sanguinary civil war was nourished for long in both kingdoms; and at length, after years of frightful warfare, the legitimate monarch, and legal order of succession, were set aside in both countries; queens were put on the thrones of both instead of kings, and England enjoyed the satisfaction, for the diffusion of her revolutionary propagandism, of destroying the securities provided for the liberties of Europe by the treaty of Utrecht, and preparing a Spanish princess for the hand of a Bourbon prince.

Not content with this memorable and politic step, and even after the recent disasters of France were actually before their eyes, our rulers were so enamoured of revolutions, that they could not refrain from encouraging it in every small state within their reach. Lord Palmerston counseled the Pope, in a too celebrated letter, to plunge into the career which has terminated so fatally for himself and for Italy. Admiral Parker long prevented the Neapolitan force from embarking for Sicily, to do there what Lord Hardinge was nearly at the same time sent to do in Ireland. We beheld the Imperial standards with complacency driven behind the Mincio; but no sooner did Radetzky disperse the revolutionary army, and advance to Milan, than British and French diplomacy interfered to arrest his march, and save their revolutionary protÉgÉ, the King of Piedmont, from the chastisement which his perfidious attack on Austria in the moment of her distress merited. The Ministerial journals are never weary of referring to the revolutions on the Continent as the cause of all the distress which has prevailed in England, since they broke out in last spring: they forget that it was England herself which first unfurled the standard of revolution, and that, if we are suffering under its effects, it is under the effects of our own measures and policy.

Strange and unaccountable as this perverted and diseased state of opinion, in a large part of the people of this country, undoubtedly is, it is easily explained when the state of society, and the channel into which political contests have run, are taken into consideration. In truth, our present errors are the direct consequence of our former wisdom; our present weakness, of our former strength; our present misery, of our former prosperity.

In the feudal ages, and over the whole Asiatic world at the present time, the contests of parties are carried on for individuals. No change of national policy, or of the system of internal government, is contemplated on either side. It is for one prince or another prince, for one sultaun or another sultaun, that men draw their swords. "Under which King, Bezonian?—speak or die!" is there the watch-word of all civil conflict. It was the same in this country during the feudal ages, and down to a very recent period. No man in the civil wars between Stephen and Henry II., or of the Plantagenet princes, or in the wars of the Roses, contemplated or desired any change of government or policy in the conflict in which they were engaged. The one party struck for the Red, the other for the White Rose. Great civil and social interests were at issue in the conflict; but the people cared little or nothing for these. The contest between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians was a great feud between two clans which divided the state; and the attachment to their chiefs was the blind devotion of the Highlanders to the Pretender.

The Reformation, which first brought the dearest objects of thought and interest home to all classes, made a great change in this respect, and substituted in large proportion general questions for the adherence to particular men, or fidelity to particular families. Still, however, the old and natural instinct of the human race to attach themselves to men, not things, continued, in a great degree, to influence the minds of the people, and as many buckled on their armour for the man as the cause. The old Cavaliers, who periled life and lands in defence of Charles I., were as much influenced by attachment to the dignified monarch, who is immortalised in the canvass of Vandyke, as by the feelings of hereditary loyalty; and the iron bands which overthrew their ranks at Marston Moor, were as devoted to Cromwell as the tenth legion to CÆsar, or the Old Guard to Napoleon. In truth, such individual influences are so strongly founded in human nature, that they will continue to the end of the world, from whatever cause a contest may have arisen, as soon as it has continued for a certain time, and will always stand forth in prominent importance when a social has turned into a military conflict, and the perils and animosities of war have endeared their leaders to the soldiers on either side. The Vendeans soon became devoted to Henri Larochjaquelein, the Republicans to Napoleon; and in our own times, the great social conflict of the nineteenth century has been determined by the fidelity of the Austrian soldiers to Radetzky, of the French to Cavaignac, of the German to Windischgratz.

But in the British empire, for a century past, it has been thoroughly understood, by men of sense of all parties, that a change of dynasty is out of the question, and that there is no reform worth contending for in the state, which is not to be effected by the means which the constitution itself has provided. This conviction, long impressed upon the nation, and interwoven as it were with the very framework of the British mind, having come to coincide with the passions incident to party divisions in a free state, has in process of time produced the strange and tortuous policy which, for above a quarter of a century, has now been followed in this country by the government, and lauded to the skies by the whole liberal party on the Continent. Deprived of the watchwords of men, the parties have come to assume those of things. Organic or social change have become the war-cry of faction, instead of change of dynasty. The nation is no longer drenched with blood by armies fighting for the Red or the White Rose, by parties striving for the mastery between the Stuart and Hanover families, but it was not less thoroughly divided by the cry of "The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill," at one time, and that of "Free-trade and cheap corn" at another. Social change, alterations of policy, have thus come to be the great objects which divide the nation; and, as it is ever the policy of Opposition to represent the conduct of Government as erroneous, it follows, as a necessary consequence, that the main efforts of the party opposed to administration always have been, since the suppression of the Rebellion in 1745, to effect, when in opposition, a change in general opinion, and, when in power, to carry that change into effect by a change of policy. The old law of nature is still in operation. Action and reaction rule mankind; and in the efforts of parties mutually to supplant each other in power, a foundation is laid for an entire change of policy at stated periods, and an alteration, as great as from night to day, in the opinions and policy of the ruling party in the same state at different times.

The old policy of England—that policy under which, in the words of Macaulay, "The authority of law and the security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never known before; under which form, the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example; under which our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; under which her opulence and martial glory grew together; under which, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually established a public credit, fruitful of marvels which, to the statesmen of any former age, would have appeared incredible; under which a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance; under which Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not mere by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and affection; under which, in America, the British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro added to the dominions of Charles V.; under which, in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid, and more durable, than that of Alexander,"[7]—was not the policy of any particular party or section of the community, and thence its long duration and unexampled success.

It was not introduced—it grew. Like the old constitution, of which it was the emanation, it arose from the wants and necessities of all classes of men during a long series of ages. It was first proclaimed in energetic terms by the vigour of Cromwell; the cry of the national representatives for markets to native industry, of the merchants, for protection to their ships, produced the Navigation Laws, and laid the foundation of the colonial empire of England. Amidst all his insouciance and folly in the drawing-room of the Duchess of Portsmouth, and the boudoirs of the Duchess of Cleveland, it was steadily pursued by Charles II. James II. did not lose sight of this same system, amidst all his infatuation and cruelty; when directing the campaign of Jeffreys in the west, he was as steadily bent on upholding and extending the navy as when, amidst the thunders of war, he combated de Ruyter and van Tromp on the coast of Holland. William III., Anne, and the Georges, pursued the same system. It directed the policy of Somers and Godolphin; it ruled the diplomacy of Walpole and Chatham; it guided the measures of Bute and North; it directed the genius of Pitt and Fox. It was for it that Marlborough conquered, and Wolfe fell; that Blake combated, and Hawke destroyed; that Nelson launched the thunderbolt of war, and Wellington carried the British standard to Madrid and Paris.

It was the peculiar structure of the English constitution, during this century and a half of prosperity and glory, that produced so remarkable a uniformity in the objects of the national policy. These objects were pursued alike by the Republicans and the Royalists; by the Roundheads and the Cavaliers; by the Whigs, during the seventy years of their rule that followed the Revolution, and the Tories, during the sixty years that succeeded the accession of George III. The policy was that of protection to all the national interests, whether landed, commercial, colonial, or manufacturing. Under this system they all grew and prospered, alike and abreast, in the marvellous manner which the pencil of Macaulay has sketched in the opening of his History. It was hard to say whether agriculture, manufactures, colonies, or shipping throve and prospered most during that unique period. The world had never seen anything like it before: it is doubtful if it will ever see anything like it again. Under its shelter, the various interests of the empire were knit together in so close a manner, that they not only all grew and prospered together, but it was universally felt that their interests were entirely dependent on each other. The toast "The plough, the loom, and the sail," was drunk with as much enthusiasm in the farmers' club as in the merchant's saloon. As varied as the interests with which they were charged, the policy of government was yet perfectly steady in following out one principle—the protection of the productive classes, whether by land or water, whether at home or abroad.

The legislature represented and embodied all these interests, and carried out this policy. It gave them a stability and consistency which had never been seen in the world before. Nominally the representatives of certain towns and counties in the British islands, the House of Commons gradually became really the representatives of the varied interests of the whole British empire. The nomination boroughs afforded an inlet alike to native talent and foreign interests. Gatton and Old Sarum, or similar close boroughs, afforded an entrance to the legislature, not only to the genius of Pitt and Fox, of Burke and Sheridan, but to the wealth of Jamaica, the rising energy of Canada, the aged civilisation of Hindostan. Experienced protection reconciled all interests to a government under which all prospered; mutual dependence made all sensible of the necessity of common unanimity. The statute-book and national treaties, from the Revolution in 1688 to the close of the war with Napoleon in 1815, exhibit the most decisive proof of the working of these varied, but not conflicting interests, in the national councils. If you contemplate the general protection afforded to agriculture and the landed interest, you would imagine the House of Commons had been entirely composed of squires. If you examine the innumerable enactments, fiscal and prohibitory, for the protection of manufactures, you would suppose it had been entirely under the government of manufacturers. If you contemplate the steady protection invariably given to the mercantile navy, you would suppose it had been chiefly directed by shipowners. If you cast your eyes on the protection constantly given by discriminating fiscal duties to colonial industry, and the vast efforts made, both by sea and land, in the field and in the cabinet, to encourage and extend our colonial dependencies, you would conclude, not only that they were represented, but that their representatives had a majority in the legislature.

The reason of this prodigy was, that all interests had, in the course of ages, and the silent effects of time, worked their way into the legislature, and all enjoyed in fair proportion a reasonable influence on government. Human wisdom could no more ab ante have framed such a system, than it could have framed the British constitution. By accident, or rather the good providence of God, it grew up from the wants of men during a series of generations; and its effects appeared in this, that—except in the cases of the American war, where unfortunate circumstances produced a departure from the system; of the Irish Celts, whom it seems impracticable to amalgamate with Saxon institutions; and of the Scottish Highlanders, whom chivalrous honour for a short period alienated from the established government—unanimity unprecedented during the whole period pervaded the British empire. All foreign colonies were desirous to be admitted into the great protecting confederacy; the French and Dutch planters in secret prayed for the defeat of their defenders when the standard of St George approached their shores. The Hindoos, with heroic constancy, alike in prosperous and adverse fortune, maintained their fidelity: Canada stood firm during the most dangerous crisis of our history; and the flame of loyalty burned as steadily on the banks of the St Lawrence, on the mountains of Jamaica, and on the shores of the Ganges, as in the crowded emporiums of London, or the smiling fields of Yorkshire.

But there is a limit imposed by nature to all earthly things. The growth of empires is restrained, after they have reached a certain stature, by laws as certain as those which arrest that of individuals. If a state does not find the causes of its ruin in foreign disaster, it will inevitably find it in internal opinion. This arises so naturally and evidently from the constitution of the human mind, that it may be regarded as a fixed law of nature in all countries where intellectual activity has been called forth, and as one of the most powerful agents in the government, by supreme Wisdom, of human affairs. This principle is to be found in the tendency of original thought to differ from the current opinion with which it is surrounded, and of party ambition to decry the system of those by whom it is excluded from power.

Universally it will be found that the greatest exertions of human intellect have been made in direct opposition to the current of general opinion; and that public thought in one age is in general but the echo of solitary meditation in that which has preceded it. Illustrations of this crowd on the reflecting mind from every period of history. The instances of Luther standing forth alone to shake down, Samson-like, the pillar of the corrupted Romish faith; of Bacon's opening, amid all the despotism of the Aristotelian philosophy, his inductive philosophy; of Galileo maintaining the motion of the earth even when surrounded by the terrors of the Italian Inquisition; of Copernicus asserting the true system of the heavens in opposition to the belief of two thousand years; of Malthus bringing forward the paradox of the danger of human increase in opposition to the previous general opinion of mankind; of Voltaire combating alone the giant power of the Roman Catholic hierarchy; of Rousseau running a course against the whole ideas of his age—will immediately occur to every reader. Many of these great men adopted erroneous opinions, and, in consequence, did as much evil to their own or the next age as others did good; but they were all characterised by one mark. Their opinions were original, and directly adverse to public opinion around them. The close of the nineteenth century was no exception to the general principle. Following out those doctrines of freedom from restraint of every kind, which in France had arisen from the natural resistance of men to the numerous fetters of the monarchy, and which had been brought forward by Turgot and the Economists, in the boudoirs of Madame Pompadour and the coteries of Paris,—Adam Smith broached the principle of Free Trade, with the exceptions of grain and shipping. The first he excepted, because it was essential to national subsistence; the second, because it was the pillar of national defence. The new philosophy was ardently embraced by the liberal party, who, chagrined by long exclusion from office, were rejoiced to find a tangible and plausible ground whereon to attack the whole existing system of government. From them it gradually extended to nearly all the ardent part of the community, ever eager to embrace doctrines at variance with previous and vulgar belief, and not yet enlightened by experience as to the effect of the new system. It was soon discovered that for a century and a half we had been proceeding on false principles. The whole policy of government since the days of Cromwell had been erroneous; in politics, in social government, in diplomacy, in the colonies, in war, in peace, at home and abroad, we had been running blindfold to destruction. True, we had become great, and glorious, and free under this abominable system; true, it had been accompanied by a growth of national strength, and an amount of national happiness, unparalleled in any former age or country; but that was all by accident. Philosophy had marked it with the sign of reprobation—prosperity had poured upon us by chance in the midst of universal misgovernment. By all the rules of calculation we should have been destroyed, though, strange to say, no symptoms of destruction had yet appeared amongst us. According to every principle of philosophy, the patient should long ago have been dead of the mortal disease under which he laboured: the only provoking thing was, that he was still walking about in robust and florid health.

Circumstances occurred at the same time, early in this century, which had the most powerful effect in exasperating the Opposition party throughout the country, and inducing them to embrace, universally and ardently, the new philosophy, which condemned in such unmeasured terms the whole system of government pursued by their antagonists. For half a century, since the long dominion of the Whigs was terminated in 1761 by George III., the Tories had been, with the exception of a few months, constantly in office. Though their system of government in religion, in social affairs, in foreign relations, was nothing but a continuation of that which the Whigs had introduced, and according to which the government had been conducted from 1688 to 1760, yet, in the ardour of their zeal for the overthrow of their adversaries, the liberal party embraced on every point the opposite side. The descendants of Lord Russel became the advocates of Roman Catholic emancipation; the followers of Marlborough and Godolphin, the partisans of submission to France; the successors of Walpole and Chatham, the advocates of free trade and colonial neglect. These feelings, embraced from the influence of a determination to find fault with government in every particular, were worked up to the highest pitch by the glorious result of the war with France, and the apparently interminable lease of power acquired by their adversaries from the overthrow of Napoleon. That memorable event, so opposite to that which they had all so long in public predicted, so entirely the reverse of that which many had in secret wished, produced a profound impression on the Whig party. Their feelings were only the more acute, that, amidst the tumult of national exultation, they were forced to suppress them, and to wear the countenance of satisfaction, when the bitterness of disappointment was in their hearts. To the extreme asperity of these feelings, and the universal twist which they gave to the minds of the whole liberal party in Great Britain, the subsequent general change in their political principles is to be ascribed; and, in the practical application of these principles, the real cause of our present distressed condition is to be found.

While one set of causes thus prepared, in the triumph of Conservative and protective principles, the strongest possible reaction against them, and prognosticated, at no distant period, their general banishment from popular thought, another, and a not less powerful set, flowing from the same cause, gave these principles the means of acquiring a political supremacy, and ruling the government of the state. The old policy of England, it has been already observed, for a hundred and fifty years, had been to take care of the producers, and let the consumers take care of themselves. Such had been the effects of this protective policy, that, before the close of the Revolutionary war, during which it received its full development, the producing classes, both in town and country, had become so rich and powerful, that it was easy to see they would ere long give a preponderance to urban over rural industry. The vast flood of agricultural riches poured for expenditure into towns; that of the manufacturers and merchants seldom left it. The great manufacturing and mercantile places, during a century, had advanced in population tenfold, in wealth thirty-fold. The result of this change was very curious, and in the highest degree important. Under the shadow of protection to industry in all its branches, riches, both in town and country, had increased so prodigiously, that the holders of it had acquired a preponderance over the classes in the state yet engaged in the toilsome and hazardous work of production. The owners of realised capital had become so numerous and weighty, from the beneficial effects of the protective system under which the country had so long flourished, that they formed an important class apart, which began to look to its separate interests. The consumers had become so numerous and affluent, that they were enabled to bid defiance to the producers. The maxim became prevalent, "Take care of the consumer, and let the producer take care of himself." Thence the clamour for free trade. Having passed the labour of production, during which they, or their fathers, had strenuously supported the protective principles, by which they were making their money, the next thing was to support the opposite principles, by which the value of the made money might be augmented. This was to be done by free trade and a contracted currency. Having made millions by protection, the object now was to add a half to every million by raising its value. The way to do this seemed to be by cheapening the price of every other article, and raising the price of money: in other words, the system of cheapening everything without reference to its effect on the interests of production.

Parliamentary reform, for which the Whigs, disappointed by long exclusion from office, laboured strenuously, in conjunction with the commercial and moneyed classes, enriched by protection, gave them the means of carrying both objects into execution, because it made two-thirds of the House of Commons the representatives of burghs. The cry of cheap bread was seductive to all classes in towns:—to the employer, because it opened the prospect of reducing the price of labour, and to the operative, because it presents that of lowering that of provisions. To these two objects, accordingly, of raising the value of money and lowering the remuneration of industry, the Reform parliament, the organ of the moneyed interest and consuming classes, has, through all the changes of party, been perfectly steady. It is no wonder it has been so, for it was the first-born of those interests. Twenty years before the cry for reform convulsed the nation—in 1810—the Bullion Committee brought forward the principle of a metallic, and, consequently, a contracted currency; and they recommended its adoption in the very crisis of the war, when Wellington lay at Torres Vedras, and when the monetary crisis to which it must have led would have made us a province of France. Reform was the consequence of the change in the currency, not its cause. The whole time from 1819 to 1831, with the exception of 1824 and 1825, was one uninterrupted period of suffering. Such was the misery it produced that the minds of men were prepared for any change. A chaos of unanimity was produced by a chaos of suffering.

Thus, by a singular and most interesting chain of causes and effects, it was the triumph of Conservative and protective principles in the latter years of the war, and the entire demonstration thus afforded of their justice and expedience, which was the immediate cause of their subsequent abandonment, and all the misery which has thence arisen, and with which we are still everywhere surrounded. For it at once turned all the intellectual energies of the great liberal party to oppose, in every particular, the system by which their opponents had been glorified, and concentrated all the energies of the now powerful moneyed classes to swell, by a change of policy, the fortunes on which their consequence depended, and which had arisen from the long prevalence of the opposite system. For such is the tendency to action and reaction, in all vigorous and intellectual communities, that truth itself is for long no security against their occurrence. On the contrary, so vehement are the passions excited by a great and lasting triumph of one party, even though in the right, that the victory of truth, whether in politics or religion, is often the immediate cause of the subsequent triumph of error. The great Roman Catholic reaction against the Reformation, which Ranke has so clearly elucidated, and Macaulay has so powerfully illustrated, has its exact counterpart in the great political reaction of the Whig party, of which Macaulay is himself the brightest ornament.

That this is the true explanation of the strange and tortuous policy, both in domestic and foreign affairs, under which the nation has so long suffered, is apparent on the slightest survey of political affairs in the last and present century.

The old principle of the English constitution, which had worked itself into existence, or grown up from the necessities of men, during a long course of years, was, that the whole interests of the state should be represented, and that the House of Commons was the assembly in which the representatives of all those varied interests were to be found. For the admission of these varied interests, a varied system of electoral qualifications, admitting all interests, noble, mercantile, industrial, popular, landed, and colonial, was indispensable. In the old House of Commons, all these classes found a place for their representatives, and thence the commercial protection it afforded to industry. According to the new system, a vast majority of seats was to be allotted to one class only, the householders and shopkeepers of towns. That class was the moneyed and consuming class; and thence the whole subsequent course of British policy, which has been to sacrifice everything to their interests.

The old maxim of government, alike with Whigs and Tories, was, that native industry of all sorts, and especially agricultural industry, was to be protected, and that foreign competition was to be admitted only in so far as was not inconsistent with this primary object. The new philosophy taught, and the modern liberals carried into execution, a different principle. They went on the maxim that the interests of the consumers alone were to be considered: that to cheapen everything was the great object; and that it mattered not how severely the producers of articles suffered, provided those who purchased them were enabled to do so at a reduced rate. This policy, long lauded in abstract writings and reviews, was at length carried into execution by Sir R. Peel, by the tariff of 1842 and the free-trade measures of 1846.

To protect and extend our colonial dependencies was the great object of British policy, alike with Whigs and Tories, from the time of Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon. In them, it was thought our manufacturers would find a lasting and rapidly increasing market for their produce, which would, in the end, enable us equally to defy the hostility, and withstand the rivalry of foreign states. The new school held that this was an antiquated prejudice: that colonies were a burden rather than a blessing to the mother country: that the independence of America was the greatest blessing that ever befell Great Britain; and that, provided we could buy colonial produce a little cheaper, it signified nothing though our colonies perished by the want of remuneration for their industry, or were led to revolt from exasperation at the cruel and unnatural conduct of the mother country.

The navy was regarded by all our statesmen, without exception, from Cromwell to Pitt, as the main security of the British empire; its bulwark in war; the bridge which united its far-distant provinces during peace. To feed it with skilled seamen, the Navigation Laws were upheld even by Adam Smith and the first free-traders, as the wisest enactments which were to be found in the British statute-book. But here, too, it was discovered that our ancestors had been in error: the system under which had flourished for two centuries the greatest naval power that ever existed, was found to have been an entire mistake; and provided freights could be had ten per cent cheaper, it was of no consequence though the fleets of France and Russia blockaded the Thames and Mersey, and two-thirds of our trade was carried on in foreign bottoms.

To provide a CURRENCY equal to the wants of the nation, and capable of growth in proportion to the amount of their numbers and transactions, was one main object of the old policy of Great Britain. Thence the establishment of banks in such numbers in every part of the empire during the eighteenth century, and the introduction of the suspension of the obligation to pay in gold in 1797, when the necessities of war had drained nearly all that part of the currency out of the country, and it was evident that, unless a substitute for it in sufficient quantities was provided, the nation itself, and all the individuals in it, would speedily become bankrupt. The marvels of British finance from that time till 1815, which excited the deserved astonishment of the whole world, had no effect in convincing the impassioned opponents of Mr Pitt, that this was the true system adapted for that or any similar crisis. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely wrong. The whole philosophers and liberal school of politicians discovered that the very opposite was the right principle; that gold, the most variable in price and evanescent, because the most desired and portable of earthly things, was the only safe foundation for a currency; that paper was worthless and perilous, unless in so far as it could be instantly converted into that incomparable metal; and that, consequently, the more the precious metals were withdrawn from the country, by the necessities of war or the effects of adverse exchanges, the more the paper circulation should be contracted. If the last sovereign went out, they held it clear the last note should be drawn in. The new system was brought into practice by Sir R. Peel, by the acts of 1844 and 1845, simultaneously with a vast importation of grain under the free-trade system—and we know the consequence. We were speedily near our last sovereign and last note also.

To establish a sinking fund, which should secure to the nation during peace the means of discharging the debt contracted amidst the necessities of war, was one of the greatest objects of the old English policy, which was supported with equal earnestness by Mr Pitt and Mr Fox, by Mr Addington and Lord Henry Petty. So steadily was this admirable system adhered to through all the dangers and necessities of the war, that we had a clear sinking fund of £15,000,000 a-year, when the contest terminated in 1815, which, if kept up at that amount, from the indirect taxes from which it was levied during peace, would, beyond all question, as the loans had ceased, have discharged the whole debt by the year 1845. But the liberals soon discovered that this was the greatest of all errors: it was all a delusion; the mathematical demonstration, on which it was founded, was a fallacy; and the only wisdom was to repeal the indirect taxes, from which the sinking fund was maintained, and leave posterity to dispose of the debt as they best could, without any fund for its discharge. This system was gradually carried into effect by the successive repeal of the indirect taxes by different administrations; until at length, after thirty-three years of peace, we have, instead of the surplus of fifteen millions bequeathed to us by the war, an average deficit of fifteen hundred thousand pounds; and the debt, after the longest peace recorded in British history, has undergone scarcely any diminution.

Indirect taxation was the main basis of the British finance in old times—equally when directed by the Whigs as the Tories. Direct taxes were a last and painful resource, to be reserved for a period during war, when it had become absolutely unavoidable. So efficacious was this system proved to be by the event, when acting on a nation enjoying protected industry, and an adequate and irremovable currency, that, before the end of the war, £72,000,000 was, amidst universal prosperity, with ease raised from eighteen millions of people in Great Britain and Ireland. This astonishing result, unparalleled in the previous history of the world, had no influence in convincing the modern liberals that the system which produced it was right. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely wrong. They introduced the opposite system: in twenty-five years, they repealed £40,000,000 of indirect taxes; and they reintroduced the income tax as a permanent burden during peace. We see the result. The sinking fund has disappeared; the income tax is fixed about our necks; a deficit of from a million and a half to two millions annually incurred; and it is now more difficult to extract fifty-two millions annually from twenty-nine millions of souls, than, at the close of the war, it was to raise seventy-two millions from eighteen millions of inhabitants.

To discourage revolution, both abroad and at home, and enable industry, in peace and tranquillity, to reap the fruits of its toil, was the grand object of the great contest which Pitt's wisdom bequeathed to his successors, and Wellington's arm brought to a glorious termination. This, however, was ere long discovered to be the greatest error of all. England, it was found out, had a decided interest in promoting the cause of revolution all over the world. So enamoured did we soon become of the propagandist mania, that we pursued it in direct opposition to our planned national interests, and with the entire abrogation of our whole previous policy, for which we had engaged in the greatest and most costly wars, alike under Whig and Tory administrations. We supported revolutions in the South American states, though thereby we reduced to a half of its former amount the supply of the precious metals throughout the globe; and, in consequence, increased immensely the embarrassment which a contracted paper currency had brought upon the nation: we supported revolution in Belgium, though thereby we brought the tricolor standard down to Antwerp, and surrendered to French influence the barrier fortresses won by the victories of Marlborough and Wellington: we supported it during four years of carnage and atrocity in Spain, though thereby we undid the work of our own hands, in the treaty of Utrecht, surrendered the whole objects gained by the War of the Succession, and placed the female line upon the throne, as if to invite the French princes to come and carry off the glittering prize: we supported revolutions in Sicily and Italy, though thereby we gave such a blow to our export trade, that it sank £1,400,000 in the single month of last May, and above £5,000,000 in the course of the year 1848.

To abolish the slave trade was one of the objects which Whigs and Tories had most at heart in the latter years of the old system; and in that great and glorious contest Mr Pitt, Mr Fox, and Mr Wilberforce stood side by side. But this object, so important in its results, so interesting to humanity from its tendency to alleviate human suffering, ere long yielded to the enlightened views of modern liberals. It was discovered that it was much more important to cheapen sugar for a time[8] than to rescue the African race from perdition. Free trade in sugar was introduced, although it was demonstrated, and, indeed, confessed, that the effect of it would be to ruin all the free-labour colonies, and throw the supply of the world into the hands of the slave states. Provided, for a few years, you succeeded in reducing the average retail price of sugar a penny a pound, it was deemed of no consequence though we extinguished the growth of free-labour sugar—destroyed colonies in which a hundred millions of British capital were invested, and doubled the slave trade in extent, and quadrupled it in horror, throughout the globe.

It had been the constant policy of the British government, under all administrations, for above a century and a half, to endeavour to reclaim the Irish population by introducing among them colonies of English who might teach them industry, and Protestant missionaries who might reclaim them from barbarism. The Irish landlords and boroughs were the outposts of civilisation among a race of savages; the Irish Church the station of Christianity amidst the darkness of Romish slavery. So effectual was this system, and so perfectly adapted to the character of the Celtic race—capable of great things when led by others, but utterly unfit for self-government, and incapable of improvement when left to itself,—that even in the ruthless hands of Cromwell, yet reeking with the slaughter of stormed cities, it soon spread a degree of prosperity through the country then unknown, and rarely if ever since equalled in that ill-starred land.[9] But the experience of the utter futility of all attempts, during a century and a half, to leave the native Irish Celts to themselves or their own direction, had no effect whatever in convincing our modern liberals that they were incapable of self-direction, and would only be ruined by Saxon institutions. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that the absence of self-government was the sole cause of the wretchedness of the country, and that nothing was wanting but an entire participation in the privileges of British subjects, to render them as industrious, prosperous, and loyal as the yeomen of Kent or Surrey. In pursuance of those principles, Catholic Emancipation was granted: the Whigs had effected one revolution in 1688, by coalescing with the whole Tories to exclude the Catholics from the government; they brought about another revolution, in 1829, by coalescing with a section of the Tories to bring them in. In furtherance of the new system, so plausible in theory, so dangerous in practice, of extending to all men, of all races, and in all stages of political advancement, the same privileges, the liberals successively gave the Irish the command of their boroughs, the abridgment of the Protestant Church, and the abolition of tithes as a burden on the tenant. They encouraged agitation, allowed treason to be openly spoken in every part of the country, and winked at monster meetings, till the community was wellnigh thrown into convulsions. Meanwhile, agriculture was neglected—industry disappeared—capital was scared away. The land was run out, and became unfit for anything but lazy-beds of potatoes. The people became agitators, not cultivators: they were always running about to meetings—not frequenting fairs. The potato-blight fell on a country thus prepared for ruin, and the unparalleled misery of 1847, and the rebellion of 1848, were the consequence.

It would be easy to carry these illustrations farther, and to trace the working of the principles we have mentioned through the whole modern system of government in Great Britain. Enough has been said to show that the system is neither founded on the principles contended for by the old Whigs, nor on any appreciation of, or attention to, the national interests, or the dictates of experience in any respect. It has arisen entirely from a blind desire of change, and an opposition to the old system of government, whether of Whig or Tory origin, and a selfish thirst for aggrandisement on the part of the moneyed and commercial classes, whom that system had elevated to riches and power. Experience was not disregarded by this school of politicians; on the contrary, it was sedulously attended to, its lessons carefully marked. But it was considered as a beacon to be avoided, not a light to be followed. Against its conclusions the whole weight of declamation and shafts of irony were directed. It had been the cri de guerre of their enemies, the standard of Mr Pitt's policy; therefore the opposite system was to be inscribed on their banners. It was the ruling principle of their political opponents; and, worst of all, it was the system which, though it had raised the country to power and greatness, had for twenty years excluded themselves from power. Thence the modern system, under which the nation has suffered, and is suffering, such incalculable misfortunes. It has been said, by an enlightened Whig of the old school, that "this age appears to be one in which every conceivable folly must be believed and reduced to practice before it is abandoned." It is really so; and the reason is, it is an age in which the former system of government, founded on experience and brought about by necessity, has been supplanted by one based on a systematic and invariable determination to change the old system in every particular. The liberals, whether factious or moneyed, of the new school, flattered themselves they were making great advances in political science, when they were merely yielding to the same spirit which made the Calvinists stand up when they prayed, because all the world before them had knelt down, and sit still during psalms, because the Roman Catholics had stood up.

But truth is great, and will prevail; experience is its test, and is perpetually contradicting the theories of man. The year 1848 has been no exception to the maxims of Tacitus and Burke. Dreadful indeed in suffering, appalling in form, are the lessons which it has read to mankind! Ten months have not elapsed, since, by a well-concerted urban tumult, seconded by the treachery of the national guard, the throne of the Barricades was overturned in France—and what do we already see on the continent of Europe? Vienna petitioning for a continuation of the state of siege, as the only security against the tyranny of democracy: Berlin hailing with rapture the dissolution of the Assembly, and reappearance of the king in the capital: Milan restored to the sway of the Austrians: France seeking, in the quasi imperial crown of Prince Louis Napoleon, with 90,000 soldiers in its capital, a refuge from the insupportable evils of a democratic republic. The year 1848 has added another to the numerous proofs which history affords, that popular convulsions, from whatever cause arising, can terminate only in the rule of the sword; but it has taught two other lessons of incalculable importance to the present and future tranquillity of mankind. These are, that soldiers who in civil convulsions fraternise with the insurgents, and violate their oaths, are the worst enemies of the people, for they inevitably induce a military despotism, which extinguishes all hopes of freedom. The other is, that the institution of a national guard is in troubled times of all others the most absurd; and that, to put arms into the hands of the people, when warmed by revolutionary passions, is only to light the torch of civil discord with your own hand, and hand over the country to anarchy, ruin, and slavery.

Nor has the year been less fruitful of civil premonitions or lessons of the last importance to the future tranquillity and prosperity of Great Britain. Numerous popular delusions have been dispelled during that period. The dreams of Irish independence have been broken; English Chartism has been crushed. The revolutionists see that the people of Great Britain are not disposed to yield their property to the spoiler, their throats to the murderer, their homes to the incendiary. Free trade and a fettered currency have brought forth their natural fruits—national embarrassment, general suffering, popular misery. One half of the wealth of our manufacturing towns has been destroyed since the new system began. Two years of free trade and a contracted currency have undone nearly all that twenty years of protection and a sufficient currency had done. The great mercantile class have suffered so dreadfully under the effect of their own measures, that their power for good or for evil has been essentially abridged. The colossus which, for a quarter of a century, has bestrode the nation, has been shaken by the earthquake which itself had prepared. Abroad and at home, in peace and in war, delusion has brought forth suffering. The year of revolutions has been the Ninth of Thermidor, of liberal principles, for it has brought them to the test of experience.