No. CCXII.

ROUSSEAU long ago prophesied that the American war commenced the era of revolutions; and subsequent events have too clearly proved that in this respect at least he did not mistake the signs of the times. With the rise of Transatlantic independence, commenced a new series of contests flowing not from the ambition of Kings, or the rivalry of their Ministers, but the impatient spirit and interminable expectations of the people. Wars since that period have increased in frequency, and augmented in horror; not armies merely, but whole nations have been brought into the field; the blood of millions has flowed in every quarter of the globe; and in the effort to emancipate themselves from a constitutional sway, mankind have fallen under a severer bondage than was ever known even to Oriental subjection.

But it is not merely by the fierce and uninterrupted struggle between the two great parties who divide the world, that the American Revolution has been the beginning of a new era in human affairs. It is by the contagion of example; by the constant exhibition of Republican institutions on a great scale, and under circum

stances of unparalleled prosperity, that it has produced so astonishing a change in the political institutions of the Old World-More powerful than the eloquence of Mirabeau or the sword of Napoleon, the democratic government of America has struck far and wide into the minds of the European people; and the privileges enjoyed by her citizens become an object of envy to millions utterly incapable of understanding either the causes which have rendered this prosperity coexistent with this equality, or forbid its application to the more aged dynasties of the Old World. It is in vain that more thoughtful and experienced persons suggested that the circumstances of Europe and America were essentially different; that institutions which answered perfectly well amongst a young people, beginning their political existence without any public debt, or great families, or feudal prejudices, and situated amidst a boundless profusion of unoccupied land, were wholly inapplicable to old states grown grey in a certain political career, overflowing with inhabitants, overwhelmed with debt, with vast property accumulated in

VOL. XXXIV. NO, CCXII.

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a few hands, no unoccupied land to divide, and millions dependent upon the wages of labour. All these considerations, of such vital importance in considering the question whether the institutions of America could be applied to this country, were utterly overlooked, and hungry millions panted only the more ardently for the fancied El Dorado of American equality, because it was a dream which never could be realized in this country.

The French writers have often said that England, by its simple vicinity, by the example she set of liberal institutions close to the continental shores, has done more mischief to the adjoining states than even by the thunder of her fleets or the terror of her arms. There can be little doubt that the observation is well founded. The mania of imitationthe passion for transporting the institutions of one country to another of transplanting privileges and liberties from a nation in one state of civilisation to another, under different circumstances, has done and is doing more to injure the cause of freedom than all the efforts of tyrants for its suppression. The effects it produces are of the very worst kind, because it leads to the formation of constitutions so utterly absurd with reference to the people among whom they are introduced, that consequences the most fatal to public happiness may be apprehended. All the calamities which have befallen the cause of freedom for the last forty years have sprung from the mania of imitation. The French Revolution, with all the unspeakable horrors with which it was attended, and the utter annihilation of public liberty in which it has terminated, arose in a great degree from contagion. It was the Anglomania which first turned the heads of the higher orders, and the example of the American Revolution which next set the train on fire, and convulsed the Old World with the flame originating in the New. It is the example of French equality and licentiousness; of a nation practically invested with all the powers of sovereignty; of all honours and offices flowing from the multitude, no matter for how short a time or with what ruinous consequences, which has ever since agitated the world, and kept the revo

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lutionary party everywhere together, from the hope of one day revelling in similar orgies. The Revolutions of Spain, Naples, and Piedmont, in 1820, all sprung from imitation of the Spanish revolt in the Island of Leon; and the subsequent degradation of the Peninsula is entirely to be ascribed to the promulgation of a constitution both in Spain and Portugal, utterly at variance with their character and interests. later days, the explosion of the Barricades immediately overturned Flanders, and put the last drop into the cup which made Polish misery overflow; and though last, not least, the ancient fabric of the British Constitution has yielded to the shock of foreign example, and the liberty which had grown up for eight hundred years under the shadow of native institutions, has been exposed to the perilous storms of democratic ambition.

Dangers of a similar and still more alarming kind, threaten the country from the influence of American institutions, ill understood or misapplied. There is nothing to which the republican party everywhere point with such exultation, as the example of American freedom; and glowing eulogies are periodically put forth from the press of this land of general equality, to stimulate the revolutionary spirit of Europe to fresh exertions. Nor is there wanting enough, in the simple narrative of Transatlantic independence, to set on fire cooler heads than the patriots and democrats of modern Europe. The facts of a nation existing without a monarch or nobles, or public debt, rarely engaged in war, steadily advancing in opulence; without pauperism in many of its provinces, without a standing army in any; with an immense commerce, and a boundless territory; with a population doubling every thirty years, and public wealth tripling in the same time, are amply sufficient to account for the powerful interest which they have excited in the Eastern World, and to explain the anxious eyes with which the ardent and enthusiastic so generally turn to its infant fortunes, as the dawn of a brighter day to the human race.

There is no example in the history of the world, of the institutions of one country being transferred to an

other, without the most disastrous effects; nor is a single instance to be found, in any age, of the successful transplantation of a constitution. This of itself is sufficient to make the prudent pause, before they engage in any such attempt. No people have more obstinately persisted in this system of transferring their own institutions to other states than the English; and in every one instance which they have tried, they have experienced a total failure. Sicily is one of the most memorable instances of their experimental legislation; they thought, when that island was under their power during the late war, that all that was wanting to make its inhabitants perfectly happy, was to give them the English constitution; and accordingly they forthwith proceeded to frame a government for the island, with king, lords, and commons, popular elections, bills, budgets, and all the machinery of British legislation, which was soon found to be so utterly absurd and impracticable among its inhabitants, that, without external violence, it sunk to the ground after a few years' experiment, and the only trace of it which now remains is the expression uno budgetto," a money statement, which has become naturalized in the harmonious language of the Mediterranean shores from its Gothic regenerators.

The Spanish Peninsula is another instance of the total failure of transplanted institutions. In 1812, when English influence was predominant at Cadiz, a constitution was framed for the people of Spain, which has been the direct and immediate cause of the whole subsequent disasters and miseries of the Peninsula; and subsequently, with the same sanction, a similar constitution, based on the same ruinous equality, was extended to Portugal. At once, without any previous habits of preparation, without any enquiry as to its probable working among its varied inhabitants, they introduced a constitution, of which the basis was universal suffrage in the election of the Cortes. The effect of such an innovation might have been foreseen, and is now become a matter of history. Its effects were not at first conspicuous; because Ferdinand in

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stantly on his arrival annulled a constitution which nine-tenths of his subjects felt to be impracticable; but the moment that the revolt of 1820 re-established it in both kingdoms of the Peninsula, extreme revolutionary measures were menced, the property of the church was confiscated, that of the fundholders annihilated, and nothing but the invasion of the Duke d'Angoulême, in 1823, prevented the revival of anarchy in Spain and Portugal, as bloody as the Reign of Terror. The present contest between Don Pedro and Don Miguel is a legacy bequeathed to the Peninsula by the same insane measures; it is the universal suffrage established by our ridiculous Portuguese constitution, which has set all the revolutionists of the Peninsula on fire; and the contest now raging on the banks of the Douro is the direct consequence of the imitation, by European legislators, of American institutions.

Notwithstanding all this, however, the democratic government of the United States is the subject of unmeasured and incessant eulogy by all the revolutionists of the present age. Their avowed object is to transplant to a European soil the tree of American freedom; and the utter failure of all such attempts in other states, only renders them the more anxious to effect it in this island. Nor are such efforts to be despised, merely because all men of sense perceive them to be impracticable, and all men of information are fully impressed with their perilous consequences. The great majority of men, it is always to be recollected, are, so far as politics are concerned, neither possessed of sense nor information; they are mere puppets in the hands of more designing leaders, who pull the wires by means of that never-failing instrument, the public press. Because a series of measures are obviously perilous in the extreme, and will involve in their ultimate consequences the ruin of the very men who urge it forward, is no reason whatever for concluding that it will not be forced upon the Legislature by an imperious populace. The Reform Bill has both taught us what can be done by democratic fury in this way, and esta