plied opinions which he has touched, he evinces an unfailing anxiety to discover and establish whatever is true and valuable, without ever indulging his fancy in starting ingenious theories, or wasting his powers upon shewy and unprofitable speculations. It is this simplicity of purpose which, beyond all other qualities, entitles him, in our estimation, to the character of a great writer; it is this (to use his own language) which properly belongs to and is alone consistent with " that unclouded reason, that unperverted sensibility, and that unconquerable candour, which mark a comprehensive, an upright, and an elevated mind.”

POLITICAL institutions, in order that they may be either permanent or beneficial, as they have had their origin in the wants of those for whom they are provided, must also accord in the main with the character and wishes of the community. It is true, indeed, that most governments have been originally founded in violence. It is also true that an exact mathematical correspondence, a perfect and unvarying sympathy between the constituted authorities of a state and the great body of its population, is neither necessary nor possible. It is moreover true, that to denounce all political establishments as illegitimate which have had their origin in violence, or which, being more quietly erected, no longer retain in every particular their primitive character, is rash and wicked. Yet after every reasonable concession has been made, and every proper allowance for the imperfections of all human performances, it still remains certain, that wherever the government of a country, including both its formal constitution and the general spirit of its administration, is decidedly at variance with the settled sentiments and wishes of the prevailing part

of the community, there is not only a manifest departure from all just theory, but there is also imminent danger of some national convulsion.

But this is not all. The characters of nations change like the characters of individuals; not so rapidly, but almost as certainly. Wherever the advancement of industry and knowledge have not been violently excluded, a great revolution is silently effected in the morals, manners, habits, opinions, and affections of a whole people. Kings and princes are no longer the captains of their armies, renowned for courage and enterprize. The steel-clad barons of a rougher age are softened into silken courtiers, or trained perhaps by a happier discipline into well-bred and very peaceable gentlemen. The middle class of society is swelled far beyond its natural dimensions, and becomes the depository of a large part of the more active virtues and vices of the community. The sympathy between this body and the lower orders grows at the same time to be quick and powerful. Prejudices which once held the world in awe become feeble or contemptible. Sentiments and attachments which supplied the place of reason, and carried men away sometimes to wisdom and sometimes to folly, sometimes to their benefit and sometimes to their hurt, but always with a mighty energy, are obliterated, or superseded by principles of action wholly differing in their origin and their objects. New forms arise and different views engage;" and for a new state of forms and views a new constitution of public authority is evidently required. It is not enough, therefore, that the government of a country be originally framed with wisdom, or at any given period well suited to a particular community;-it is necessary that there should be in its organization elements of soft

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ness: a power and a disposition to conform to the varying conditions and characters of mankind; not indeed too rapidly, for it is the very office of government to forbid, sudden changes, but slowly and steadily, for the purpose of preventing that very evil which an excessive pliability would occasion. It is with nations as with parties, "we must follow in order that we may lead." There must be some avenue or organ through which the public sentiments may be received, with a corresponding capacity of gradually approximating in principle and practice to the actual state of the community. Without these all is darkness and danger.

The French revolution was an earthquake. In France there was little which indicated to a superficial observer the approach of that terrible convulsion. Her temples were yet standing, and the priests ministered at the altars. The balance of justice was suspended in her halls. The palaces were blazoned with the ensigns of royalty. The whole structure of her constitution was entire, its proportions unimpaired, its bulwarks uninjured; when the wild elements of nature suddenly broke loose, and the labour and the pride of ages were ingulphed in an instant. Men who were contemporary with this tremendous event could hardly be expected to form a just estimate of its character. They saw a furious anarchical democracy trampling on the fragments of a mild and venerable government: they saw a base and impious atheism profaning the sanctuaries of Christianity; they saw the refined and imposing manners of the politest capital in Europe succeeded by a barbarous licentiousness; they were struck with horror at the contemplation of such a spectacle, and could imagine no explication of so astonishing a scene, but to

suppose that a gang of ruffians, by the dexterous use of a momentary advantage, had possessed themselves of the seat of authority, and communicated their own savage dispositions to every thing around them.

But though this supposition was doubtless in some degree just, it was very far from embracing the whole truth. Those who have had an opportunity of contemplating "with reverted eye" the whole of this dismal tragedy, and who have been enabled on this account to survey it, probably in its truer dimensions, certainly through a less confused medium, are disposed, we believe, to attribute much more in this portentous history to general causes which had long been silently operating, than to any momentary imprudence in the old government, or even to the ambition and ferocity of a particular class of individuals. The true explanation of the French revolution we have no doubt is given by the writer before us:-the perfect and radical opposition which existed between the institutions and the sentiments of the French nation.

The ancient government of France was certainly not worse than that of other neighbouring countries*; but events peculiar to herself had rendered it during a century and a half entirely monarchical. Richlieu broke the power of the old feudal aristocracy; and though the Fronde in the early part of Louis the Fourteenth's reign breathed in

* We are aware that this opinion has been strenuously combated by Lord Bolingbroke in his Dissertation upon Parties, who quotes Mezeray and other French writers. But it is admitted that the people were represented in the tiers état; and that this formed a part of the French constitution from the beginning of the fourteenth to the beginning of the seventeenth century. Let any man consider what our House of Commons was in early times, or even so late as the reign of Henry VIII.