its form as you please-you may have two chambers or oneyou may place at the head a military dictator, or an elective President holding office for one year, for four years, or for ten ;but so long as the administration of public affairs remains central and bureaucratic, the utmost that full representation or universal suffrage can give you, is the power of choosing the particular set of busy bodies who shall rule you, or rather the irresponsible individual who shall appoint them. It is not liberty, but merely the selection of your head oppressor. Thus France is in a radically false position, and she has not yet found it out; she is endeavouring unconsciously to unite two incompatibilities. Her government has all the finished and scientific organization of a despotism, with the political institutions which belong to freedom. Each man has a share in the choice of his legislator and his executive chief; each man is the depositary of a calculable fraction of the sovereign power; but each man is the slave of the Passport office, the prefect, the gendarme, and the policeman. The republic of to-day may wake and find itself an empire tomorrow-scarcely an individual Frenchman would feel the difference and not one iota of the administration need be changed. As it exists now, it was the child and may be the parent of imperialism. The whole machinery of autocratic rule is at all times ready for the hand of any one who can seize it.

Again the national traditions of the French as written in their chequered history-the monuments of regal magnificence and splendour, still so cherished and admired, in the Tuileries, at Versailles, and at Fontainebleau-the inextinguishable taste of the people for gorgeous and imposing shows, and their incurable military spirit,-all combine to make the simplicity of a genuine republic unharmonious, grotesque, and out of place among them. It is manifestly an exotic-a transplanted tree of liberty, which nature never intended to grow out of such a soil. The republic, save for a few short years, is associated with no recollections of historic glory: the times which a Frenchman loves to recall are those of Henri Quatre, Louis Quatorze, and Napoleon-none of them names redolent of liberty. The French are, essentially and above all, a military people. Now, unreasoning obedience to a non-elected and non-deposable chief, an utter abnegation of the individual will, which are the soul of success in war, are direct contradictions to the ideas on which democracies are founded. The passion for external luxury and splendour is incongruous and fatal in a democracy, unless that splendour can be shared by all the people; yet in no civilized nations is that passion stronger than in France, and in few is the contrast so great between the palaces of their monarchs, (which they still take pride in and adorn,) and the habitations of the other classes of the

Difficulties of Revolutionary Governments.

33

community. In England, where the democratic element is so powerful and so spreading, there is little difference either in comfort or magnificence between Windsor Castle and Chatsworth, between St. James' Palace and the noble mansion of Longleat. The palaces of our sovereigns, the castles of our nobility, the halls of our wealthy and ancient commoners, are connected by imperceptible gradations: our Queen might take up her abode at the houses of some of our country gentlemen, and scarcely discover any diminution in the comfort of her accommodations, or the splendour of her furniture. But in France this is not so. Her royal palaces may rival or eclipse ours-certainly we have nothing so immense or gorgeous as Versaillesbut the chateaux and hotels of her nobles belong to an entirely different and much lower class than ours. She has nothing to represent that class of mansions, which we count by hundreds, of which Devonshire House, Northumberland House, Belvoir Castle, Drayton Manor, Chatsworth, and Longleat, are the type with us. The character of her social hierarchy as depicted in her dwellings is essentially monarchical: ours is essentially aristocratic. Versailles and a republic would be a standing contradiction-a perpetual incongruity and mutual reproach. They represent, and suggest, wholly opposite ideas.

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If this article had not already extended to so great a length, we should have dwelt on other difficulties which beset the task of reorganizing government and society in France; on those arising from the material condition of her people; from the degree of poverty, incompatible with contentment, in which so large a portion of her population live; from the want of a career," so painfully felt by many thousands of her most active spirits, and so dangerous to internal peace; from the inadequacy of her protected manufactures, her imperfect agriculture, and her undeveloped commerce, to support in comfort the actual numbers on her soil; from the law of equal inheritance, with all its fatal and unforeseen consequences to peace, to freedom, to wealth, to social interests, and intellectual culture; and last, not least, from the fatal necessity, which each new Government that has sprung from a popular insurrection finds itself under, of turning instantly round upon the parties, the ideas, and the principles which have elevated it to power. A Government created by a revolution finds that almost its first task must be to repress revolutionary tendencies; nay more, that it must repress these tendencies far more promptly, more severely, more incessantly, than would be necessary to a Government strong in the loyalty of the nation, in the traditions of the past, in the deliberate judgment of the influential classes, and which was not harassed by the spectre of anarchy daily knocking at its gates. Yet such

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a Government-casting down the ladder by which it climbed to office-shutting the door in the faces of undeniable claims-rebuking and punishing the enthusiastic soldiers who had fought for it-imprisoning the friends to whom it owed its existencefettering and fining the press which had paved the way for its inauguration—has, it cannot be disguised, primâ facie, an ugly

aspect.

To conclude. The basis of the Governments which owed their origin to the first Revolution was reaction against old anomalies; the basis of the Empire was military power; the basis of the Restoration was legitimacy, prejudice, and prestige; the basis of Louis Philippe's Government was the material interests of the nation, and the supremacy of the bourgeoisie as the depositaries and guardians of those interests. The Revolution of February-being (as it were) an aggressive negation, not a positive effort, having no clear idea at its root, but being simply the product of discontent and disgust-furnishes no foundation for a Government. Loyalty to a legitimate monarch; deference to an ancient aristocracy; faith in a loved and venerated creed; devotion to a military leader; sober schemes for well-understood material prosperity ;-all these may form, and have formed, the foundation of stable and powerful Governments: mere reaction, mere denial, mere dissatisfaction, mere vague desires, mere aggression on existing things-never.

To construct a firm and abiding commonwealth out of such materials, and in the face of such obstacles as we have attempted to delineate, such is the problem the French people are called upon to conduct to a successful issue. Without a positive and earnest creed; without a social hierarchy; without municipal institutions and the political education they bestow; without a spirit of reverence for rights and of obedience to authority, penetrating all ranks,-we greatly doubt whether the very instruments for the creation of a republic are not wanting. A republic does not create these-it supposes and postulates their existence. They are inheritances from the past, not possessions to be called into being by a fiat. They are the slow growth of a settled political and social system, acting with justice, founded on authority and tradition, and consolidated by long years of unshaken continuance.

Forms of Infidelity in the Nineteenth Century. 35

ART. II.-1. The Progress of the Intellect, as exemplified in the Religious Development of the Greeks and Hebrews. By ROBERT WILLIAM MACKAY. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1850. 2. The Purpose of Existence popularly considered, in relation to the Origin, Development, and Destiny of the Human Mind. London, 1850.

3. Phases of Faith; Passages from the History of my Creed. By FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN, late Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford. London, 1850.

4. The Soul, her Sorrows and her Aspirations; an Essay towards the Natural History of the Soul as the true basis of Theology. By FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN. 2d Edition. London, 1849.

5. Culle Systématique de l'Humanité. Calendrier Positiviste, ou Systéme Général de Commémoration Publique. Par AUGUSTE COMTE. Paris, 1850.

It is not a little remarkable that the two apparently hostile and antagonist forces-Superstition and Scepticism-have often revived simultaneously in the past history of the Church, and that they have equally striven, especially at certain critical eras, to supersede and supplant "the faith once delivered to the saints." The fact is certain, but it may be viewed in different lights by different minds. Some may flatter themselves that the antagonism of two such conflicting forces is destined to serve a useful purpose, in the way of neutralizing each other, and preserving the Church in that straight path which is intermediate between opposite extremes of error. Others, taking, as we conceive, at once a more comprehensive and more profound view of the subject, may discern in their simultaneous reappearance an ominous " sign of the times" as a critical era in the history of public opinion, and may trace them equally to the same source, even "an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God." It is true that they are apparently antagonistic; but it is far from being equally evident that they are really opposed, either in the radical principles from which they spring, or in the ultimate issues towards which they tend. For, while Scepticism and Superstition, Infidelity and Popery, are seemingly so diverse, both in their fundamental principles and in their practical results, as to be incapable of being identified with each other, it may still be true, that, like the adverse systems of the Pharisees and Sadducees of old, they may equally indicate the operation of the same evil heart of unbelief, and even tend mutually, not to destroy, but to develop each other. The tendency

of Superstition to induce Scepticism, and of Popery to engender Infidelity, is only too apparent in the case of many of the most cultivated minds in Europe; while the counter tendency of scepticism to fall at last, as an unresisting captive, into the arms of an infallible church, has been illustrated by not a few affecting examples even in recent times. There is, in short, a nearer approximation and a stronger affinity between Infidelity and Popery, than there is or can be between either of the two and vital Evangelical Christianity; and hence, when both reappear simultaneously on the same arena, we have little hope that the one will serve only to neutralize the other: we regard them rather not as "conflicting, but as conspiring forces," which tend equally, although in different ways, to undermine and overthrow all that is most precious to us in a pure Bible Christianity. There is, in short, a mutual reaction between the two; the monstrous additions which Popery has superinduced on Christianity having a tendency to excite scepticism in the minds of reflecting men; while the mere negations of scepticism can never satisfy the instinctive yearnings of the human heart, and must leave it exposed, especially in seasons of danger or distress, and in the immediate prospect of death, to those influences, whether of hope or of fear, by which a Church claiming to be infallible can so easily impose on minds unenlightened by the word and Spirit of God. Popery makes many infidels among the young, the intelligent, the inquiring; but infidelity is so cheerless and gloomy, that popery has still the advantage, when in the progress of life a man feels that he is going to the grave; then scepticism may pass at once into superstition; infidelity may be suddenly exchanged for popery; and the laughing Montaigne may die with the host sticking in his throat. Montaigne spoke, indeed, of reposing tranquilly on the pillow of doubt; but "the fact is, that in his declining years he exchanged his boasted pillow of doubt for the more powerful opiates prescribed by the infallible church, and that he expired in performing what his old preceptor (George) Buchanan would not have scrupled to describe as an act of idolatry."*

We are now threatened with danger from each of these sources. At the present moment we are exposed to a fresh invasion of Popery, and involved in a wide-spread national agitation against its arrogant pretensions; and, simultaneously with this inroad of superstition from abroad, there has been a remarkable revival of certain Forms of Infidelity at home. The public mind, engrossed and absorbed by the one exciting theme, may have been comparatively negligent of the other; and hence

* Dugald Stewart's Preliminary Dissertation to the Encyclopædia Britannica, 51.