can be rendered consistent with the admission of others. It deserves consideration whether the true principle would not be to give every able-bodied working man, major and not receiving parochial relief, a vote, but a vote of much less weight than his superiors in intelligence, property, or station. This might be done either as the Romans did, by making the votes be taken by centuries, and classing all the votes of the poorer electors in a limited number of centuries, or giving each man a personal vote, and giving the holders of property, in addition, more votes for their property ; as one for every pound of direct taxes paid. Louis XVI. proposed a plan of this sort to Turgot before the Revolution; but that minister, deeply embued with the principles of democracy, rejected it; and Neckar, following out his views, practically established universal suffrage. Possibly the plan, if adopted and honestly carried into execution, might have prevented the whole calamities of the Revolution.

Of the dangers of such a multiplication of votes, without any restriction, Roman history affords a memorable example.

"Rome," says Montesquieu, "had conquered the world with the aid of the Italian cities, and, in return, she had communicated to them a great variety of privileges. At first they cared little for these advantages; but when the rights of Roman citizenship was that of universal empire, when no one was any thing in the world if he was not a Roman citizen, and with that little he was every thing, the Italian people resolved to perish or acquire that envied distinction. Being unable to attain this object by prayers and remonstrances, they had recourse to arms: the whole allies on the Eastern coast of the Peninsula revolted, those on the Western side were about to follow their example. Rome, obliged to combat as it were the hands by which it had conquered the world, was lost; it was about to be reduced to its walls, when it extricated itself from the difficulty by extending the privilege to the allies who had remained faithful, and shortly after to the whole.

"From that moment Rome ceased to be a city of which the people had the

same spirit, the same interest, the same love of freedom, the same reverence for the Senate. The people of Italy having become citizens, every town brought thither its dispositions, its separate interests, its dependence on some neighbouring protector. The city, torn with divisions, formed no longer a whole; and as the vast majority of the citizens were so only by a species of fiction, had neither the same magistrates, the same walls, the same temples, the same gods, nor the same places of sepulture, Rome was no longer seen with the same eyes; the undivided love of country was gone; Rome was no more. The inhabitants of whole provinces and cities were brought up to the capital to give their suffrages, or compel others to give them; the popular assemblies degenerated into vast conspiracies, a troop or seditious band usurped the sacred name of Comitia; the authority of the people, their laws, even themselves, became a mere chimera; and the anarchy rose to such a point that it became impossible to tell whether the people had made an ordinance, or had not. Writers are never tired of descanting on the divisions which ruined Rome; but they have not seen that those divisions always existed, and ever must exist in a free community. It was solely the greatness of the republic which was the cause of the evil, by changing popular tumults into civil wars. Faction was unavoidable in Rome; its warriors, so fierce, so proud, so terrible abroad, would not be moderate at home. To

expect in a free state men at once bold in war, and timid in peace, is to look for an impossibility. It may be assumed as a fixed principle, that wherever you see every one tranquil in a state which bears the name of a republic, liberty there has been long since extinct."-C. 9.

The representative system has saved Great Britain and America from these terrible popular comitia, in which, as Montesquieu has truly said, the mobs of the people became the convulsions of an empire; and which tore in pieces Poland in modern, as it had done Rome in

ancient times. But does not the real evil exist, despite this liberation from the actual tumult, in the representative government of a great empire, as much as in the stormy comitia

of an overgrown republic? It is not the mere strife in the streets, and shedding of blood in civil warfare, bad as it is, and truly as the "bellum plusquam civile" exceeds all others in horror, which is the only evil. The separation of interests, the disregard of common objects in the struggle for individual elevation, the tyranny of one class by another class, is the thing which really dissolves the national bonds in every wide-spread and free community. We see this source of discord operating with as much force in the divided representation of great popular states, as in the bloody contests of the Roman forum or the plain of Volo in Poland. The nullification of South Carolina, the obnoxious tariff of America, the fierce demands for the repeal of the union in Ireland, the sacrifice of agricultural and producing, to commercial and monied interests in Great Britain, prove that these evils are in full operation among ourselves, as well as our descendants on the other side of the Atlantic. There is a confusion of tongues, and separation of mankind from the undue amalgamation of interests, as well as individuals. Providence has a sure way to punish the selfishness and presumption of men who seek to build up a Babel of human construction ; and that is to leave them to the consequences of their own extravagance.

The style of Montesquieu may be judged from the extracts, few and imperfect as they are, given in the preceding pages. It is not vehement, eloquent, or forcible; but condensed, nervous, and epigrammatic. Nowriter

This

has furnished to succeeding times so many brilliant passages to quote ; but there are many who can be read en suite with more satisfaction. is not unfrequently the case with writers on philosophical subjects of the highest class of intellect; and it arises from the variety and originality of their ideas. The mind of the reader is fatigued by following out the multitude of thoughts which their works engender. At the close of every paragraph almost, you involuntarily close the book, to reflect on the subjects of meditation which it has presented. The same peculiarity may be remarked in the annals of Tacitus, the essays of Bacon, the poetry of Milton, the Inferno of Dante, the Discorsi of Machiavel. In the habit of expansion which has arisen in more recent times from the multiplication of books, the profits made by writing, and the necessity of satisfying the craving of a voracious public for something new, is to be found the cause of the remarkable difference in the modes of composition which has since become prevalent. When men write for the monthly or quarterly press, there is no time to be condensed or profound. What has been gained, however, in animation and fervour, has too often been lost in thought; and it may be doubted whether, among the many writers of the present day, whether in Great Britain or the Continent, there is one whose works, a century hence, will be deemed to contain as much of original and valuable ideas as even the preceding sketch, imperfect as it is, has presented in Montesquieu.