in the Quarterly Review to trace such a mighty event, which almost gave a new character to human nature, to such trifling causes as the intrigues of a royal duke, or the deficiency of revenue. But what great lesson should the statesman and philosopher draw from this revolution? That governments should humanize the lower orders of society by moral and intellectual education, and that they should adapt public institutions to the improved spirit of the age, and not, by resisting rational reforms, destroy the confi dence of the middle classes, and inflame the passions of the vulgar. These are the only ways to prevent revolutions, and to render public commotions comparatively innoxious. But the sole use which the Quarterly Review would make of the French Revolution is, to hold it up as a brutum fulmen, a sort of raw-head and bloody-bones story, to detach people from thinking of reforms at all. Until moral philosophy and intellection shall render men less blindly attached to what ever they may find the established order of things, revolutions appear to be the price of social improve ments; and, in the case of France, the price being paid, let not ignorance and servility deprive mankind of the advantages of the purchase. So much for the general views of the Quarterly Reviewer; let us now attend to the isolated errors with which the article abounds.

Without motive or provocation, the barriers of the city (of Paris) were set on fire; and on the 14th of July, 1789, the Bastile was demolished." Good heavens! that any writer with the mens sana should assert that the Lettres de Cachet, the arbitrary imprisonment of subjects for life without trial, were no motives, or that the defence of this system by the government was no provocation to an ignorant populace to destroy what they had no hopes of meliorating.

The reviewer next gives an account of the peasantry murdering Mon. Foulon, with his mouth stuffed full of hay; but ought not a spirit of truth to have induced them to add, that the peasantry had been exasperated, because M. Foulon, when speaking of the famine and

severe winter which then afflicted France, declared the people to be worse than cattle, and that they might feed upon hay. The deed was horrid, but great was the provocation.

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Speaking of the abolition of many of the most detestable abuses of the feudal system, the reviewer says, Many of these sacrifices were just, and might have been beneficial had they been duly matured and combined. All of these propositions, each of which might well have given matter for a month's discussion, were carried in one memorable night. Una nox interfuit inter maximos et nullos." Now the simple truth is, that these feudal abuses had been discussed in France for more than a half century; they had long galled the people to fury, and they had been reprobated in France by every man whose rank and influence enabled him to reprobate them withont the fear of the Bastile; the court had pertinaciously resisted their abolition; their abolition by the Constituent Assembly was, therefore, merely the completion of a long contest, upon the merits of which the public mind had for fifty years come to a rational decision. So much for the "Una nox interfuit," &c.

The reviewer then vituperates the Abbé Sieyés, a man whose moral principles obtained for him the esteem of every party in the Revolu tion. Sieyes risked his life to stop the criminal excesses of the Revolution. Reproaching the Constituent Assembly for some unjust measures, this good man exclaimed, Ils veulent être libres, ils ne savent pas être juste, upon which," says the reviewer, "it is disgusting to hear a man, who knew not how to be either just or free, reproaching an assembly no better than himself." But the talents of Sieyés, according to the reviewer, "were over-rated; he never was the leader of any party, but he was the leading tool of many, and always their dupe." The Emperor Napoleon must be supposed to have known something of the Abbé Sieyés, and he represents him as a man of the most profound knowledge and of powerful intellect, whose rigid moral principles, and abstract notions of justice, prevented his being

of use in the assemblies, but whose influence in committees was most extensive. But the reviewer, with an unexampled ignorance, states, that "the populace took upon themselves what they called the administration of justice and the execution of cri minals. The territory was divided according to a new system." Now the populace of France had no more to do with the division of that coun. try into departments than the people of Lilliput had. It is known to al most school-boys, that the " system," as the reviewer calls it, of dividing the country, originated with the Abbé Sieyes, who pursued the measure with zeal and perseverance, his object being, by this new division, to destroy the whole of the old regime of provincial parliaments, and of provincial courts.

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After a sketch of the character of Mirabeau, containing about an equal portion of truth and error, the reviewer says, that before his death "his popularity had long been on the wane." Mad. de Staël, the best possible authority on the subject, describes the anxiety of the people during his illness, and their grief at his death, to have been most intense. Thousands, she relates, daily surrounded his house, anxiously inquiring if any hope existed of his recovery; and she tells us, as a proof of his prodigious popularity, that a notion then prevailing that the life of the aged could be preserved by the injection of the blood of the young, a healthy young man sent an offer to kill himself, in order that Mirabeau might be restored by an infusion into his system of younger and more healthy blood than his own.

But the Quarterly Reviewer has unquestionably displayed prodigious talents in his portraiture of the Marquis de la Fayette, for he has discovered in that justly celebrated individual principles and qualities of all sorts, which have escaped the penetration of every person who has hitherto discussed the Marquis's character. For instance, the reviewer tells us, that "of all the men of the Revolution, the Duke of Orleans not excepted, he possessed the least understanding." This must be true, for in the unprecedented col

lisions of great intellects which the Revolution produced, the Marquis de la Fayette acquired, and long maintained, a supremacy over the public mind; he was an object of the utmost anxiety to the Courts of France and of Austria, and for a long time the object of attention all over Europe and America; and all this he achieved against the power of his own and of other Courts, without any understanding. But, says the reviewer, the Marquis had "the utmost chilliness of soul," and he "almost imagined that he felt." This is by no means meant by the reviewer as badinage, or as a sort of sportive trifling with idiotcy; it is meant, as old ladies say, in real earnest. The Marquis de la Fayette left all the splendour, and sacrificed all the intellectual and all the ani mal gratification, which his rank and fortune afforded him, in the most gay and voluptuous capital of Europe, and exposed himself to the rigours, the sufferings, and the dangers of campaigns in the wilds of America, merely from a love of liberty and of glory; all of which is proof irrefra gable that he had what the reviewer calls "the utmost chilliness of soul, and no understanding." The soar. ings of the eagle are incomprehensible to the mole. But, says the re viewer, "La Fayette could never have aspired to the crown." How valuable must be this sagacious ob servation to the readers of the Quarterly Review.

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The reviewer tells us, that the Queen of France "never had provoked the people in any manner,' and that she was mild, affable," &c. The Queen, according to every authority, without exception, had incessantly exerted herself to inspire the King with fortitude and courage to resist the Revolution, and the demands of the people, by force of arms. This conduct, whether right or wrong, whether just or unjust, was of all things calculated to provoke the people. We drop a tear over her unhappy and unmerited fate, but who, with a sane mind, would characterize Marie Antoinette as mild.

But the article teems with isolated absurdities told with a more than babyish simplicity, and with an

infatuated confidence in the ignorance, or in the credulity of its readers. The reviewer expatiates with great earnestness upon the dreadful ambition and atrocious criminality of the Republic in attacking the contemptible little territory of Avignon. Does the reviewer forget that at that very period, the three legitimate Sovereigns of Russia, Austria, and Prussia, after a long series of every possible crime, and of the most atrocious barbarity, had seized upon the whole of Poland, and without a single remonstrance from our Sovereign, although he was solemnly pledged by treaty to protect the unhappy Poles from such spoliation. With what face then could either Russia, Prussia, Austria, or England complain of the French Republicans for seizing upon Avignon. Crime cannot justify crime; but remove the moat out of thine own eye before thou triest to take the beam out of thy brother's. "At Etienne," says the reviewer, "a merchant, suspected of monopolizing corn, was torn to pieces, but no corn was found in his possession;" as if the crime of "tearing a man to pieces," turned upon his possessing or his not possessing corn; and as if, when mobs were wont to inflict sum. mary vengeance upon monopolizers of corn, any corn-merchant would put it in the power of a mob to find corn in his possession. On the flight of Louis to Varennes, the reviewer sagaciously observes, that "they (the people) pursued him to the extremity of his empire, to bring him back to new ignominy and sufferings." Now the King was not pur. sued at all; he was stopped, by mere chance, at Varennes; and what rendered the Revolutionists so anxious to bring him back was, their strong fears of the consequences of his putting himself under the protection of the Allies, and of their using his name and influence in their meditated invasion of France. The Allies would then have made of Louis the same tool that the Bourbons would now make of the King of Spain, were they to get him into their possession. According to the account given by the reviewer of the flight to Varennes, the King and his family were the most silly, in

fatuated beings it is possible to conceive. At a most critical juncture of that flight, which was to save the life of Louis, of his wife, his children, and his sister, a disastrous dispute arose upon a simple old woman's notions of a point of frivolous etiquette; the foolish old creature. insisted upon going in the carriage to the exclusion of a Marquis of "tried courage, intelligence, and loyalty." The Queen intreated the old woman to withdraw her services; the King was appealed to, and he decided in favour of the old woman, and thus lost the services of the man whose sagacity might have prevented those egregious follies which led to the arrest of the ill-fated monarch. Louis's heart was good, but he was evidently but little better than an idiot-it was impossible to save such a man.

Speaking of the infuriated popu lace of the capital, and of their attack upon Versailles on the 5th and 6th of October, 1789, the reviewer first attributes the event to the machinations of the Duke of Orleans, and then questions whether La Fa yette was not also an instigator of that terrific explosion of popular fury. The mild virtues and consistent patriotism of La Fayette render such an accusation beneath our serious notice; and although the wealth of the Duke d'Orleans may have often been employed for improper purposes during the Revolution, yet to suppose that any individual, who ostensibly kept aloof from the scene of action, could really electrify a whole population with enthusiasm in any cause, is, indeed, to attribute the explosion of the volcano to the efforts of a mouse. The Royalists have defamed the Duke of Orleans to a degree of absurdity equal to that which the Republicans have vituperated the Queen. The fact is, that the Duke of Orleans was a weak and sensual prince, who, from motives of vanity, from personal pique against the Queen, and, perhaps, from some sparks of ambition, had been induced to patronize the popular cause. In the beginning of the struggle the influence of his name and rank, and the power of his wealth, had, no doubt, been of the most essential service to the

popular leaders in the Etats Generaux, and in the Constituent Assemblies; but the popular enthusiasm soon rose to that prodigious height, that the influence of a hundred Dukes of Orleans would have been overwhelmed with facility. To talk of the Duke's exciting mobs of 60,000 people, of his paying such masses, and of his inducing them to commit what men can never commit but under the influence of enthusiasm, is worse than childish. The proverb says, felix qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas, but human happiness, of this sort at least, must be purchased at the expense of no small degree of labour; and he who would trace the causes of the French Revolution must look more profoundly than to suppose that so mighty an event could have been produced, or even materially affected, by the intrigues or profligacy of a Royal Duke.

We have done enough, we conceive, without tracing further errors, to establish our assertion, that this article in the Quarterly Review displays a want of historical spirit, of candour, and truth; that it contains a palpable misrepresentation of facts, and evinces, in some places, a total want of, and in others a lamentable perversion of all power of ratiocination. We have performed

our task in no pride of superiority, and in no spirit of political hostility; but we lament to see literature made subservient to the spirit of party; and we blush for our nature, when those, who ought to be guided by a spirit of philanthropy, pervert all their opportunities of benefiting mankind to the mean and often mischievous objects of promoting party views, and this often from motives far from disinterested. This last number of the Quarterly Review may be considered more of a political number than any which has appeared for several years, and many of its articles are more trifling and erroneous than that upon which we have been making our animadversions. We may probably notice some of the most prominent of these errors in the remaining articles before we give our readers any analytical investigations of the articles of the Edinburgh Review, reflecting upon the injury which mis-statements in such works are calculated to do to the young, and to those who are unacquainted with the arcana of the press, we conceive that our candid analyses of these reviews may be of considerable utility; and in exposing such errors we bear in mind the line in Terence :-Nosse haec omnia salus est adolescentulis.

Eur. Mag. Sept. 1823.

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