did court. The establishments of the nobles this is the state of society in which the great We have already adverted to Mr. Southey's amusing doctrine about national wealth. A state, says he, cannot be too rich; but a people may be too rich. His reason for thinking this, is extremely curious. The cure which Mr. Southey thinks that he has discovered is worthy of the sagacity which he has shown in detecting the evil. The ca lamities arising from the collection of wealth in the hands of a few capitalists are to be remedied by collecting it in the hands of one great capitalist, who has no conceivable motive to use it better than other capitalists,-the all-devouring state. It is not strange that, differing so widely from Mr. Southey as to the past progress of society, we should differ from him also as to its probable destiny. He thinks, that to all outward appearance, the country is hastening to destruction; but he relies firmly on the goodness of God. We do not see either the piety or the rationality of thus confidently ex"A people may be too rich, because it is the pecting that the Supreme Being will interfere tendency of the commercial, and more espe- to disturb the common succession of causes cially, of the manufacturing system, to collect and effects. We, too, rely on his goodness— wealth rather than to diffuse it. Where wealth on his goodness as manifested, not in extrais necessarily employed in any of the specula-ordinary interpositions, but in those general tions of trade, its increase is in proportion to laws which it has pleased him to establish in its amount. Great capitalists become like the physical and in the moral world. We rely pikes in a fish-pond, who devour the weaker on the natural tendency of the human intelfish; and it is but too certain, that the poverty of one part of the people seems to increase in the same ratio as the riches of another. There are examples of this in history. In Portugal, when the high tide of wealth flowed in from the conquests in Africa and the East, the effect of that great influx was not more visible in the augmented splendour of the court, and the luxury of the higher ranks, than in the distress of the people." tries have outrun them. But we suspect that they had been positively, though not relatively, advancing. We suspect that Holland is richer than when she sent her navies up the Thames; that Spain is richer than when a French king was brought captive to the footstool of Charles the Fifth. |lect to truth, and on the natural tendency of society to improvement. We know no well authenticated instance of a people which has decidedly retrograded in civilization and prosperity, except from the influence of violent and terrible calamities-such as those which laid the Roman empire in ruins, or those which, about the beginning of the sixteenth century, desolated Italy. We know of no country which, at the end of fifty years of peace and Mr. Southey's instance is not a very fortu- tolerably good government, has been less prosnate one. The wealth which did so little for perous than at the beginning of that period. the Portuguese was not the fruit either of The political importance of a state may demanufactures or of commerce carried on by cline, as the balance of power is disturbed by private individuals. It was the wealth, not of the introduction of new forces. Thus the the people, but of the government and its crea- influence of Holland and of Spain is much tures, of those who, as Mr. Southey thinks, diminished. But are Holland and Spain poornever can be too rich. The fact is, that Mr.er than formerly? We doubt it. Other counSouthey's proposition is opposed to all history, and to the phenomena which surround us on every side. England is the richest country in Europe, the most commercial, and the most manufacturing. Russia and Poland are the poorest countries in Europe. They have scarcely any trade, and none but the rudest manufactures. Is wealth more diffused in History is full of the signs of this natural Russia and Poland than in England? There progress of society. We see in almost every are individuals in Russia and Poland whose part of the annals of mankind how the indusincomes are probably equal to those of our try of individuals, struggling up against wars, richest countrymen. It may be doubted, whe- taxes, famines, conflagrations, mischievous ther there are not, in those countries, as many prohibitions, and more mischievous protecfortunes of eighty thousand a year as here. tions, creates faster than governments can But are there as many fortunes of five thou-squander, and repairs whatever invaders can sand a year, or of one thousand a year? There destroy. We see the capital of nations increas are parishes in England which contain more people of between five hundred and three thousand pounds a year than could be found in all the dominions of the Emperor Nicholas. The neat and commodious houses which have been built in London and its vicinity, for people of this class, within the last thirty years, would of themselves form a city larger than the capitals of some European kingdoms. And ing, and all the arts of life approaching nearer and nearer to perfection, in spite of the grossest corruption and the wildest profusion on the part of rulers. The present moment is one of great distress. But how small will that distress appear when we think over the history of the last forty years;—a war, compared with which all other wars sink into insignificance; taxation, such as the most heavily taxed people of former times could not have conceived; a debt larger than all the public debts that ever existed in the world added together; the food of the people studiously rendered dear; the currency imprudently debased, and imprudently restored. Yet is the country poorer than in 1790? We fully believe that, in spite of all the misgovernment of her rulers, she has been almost constantly becoming richer and richer. Now and then there has been a stoppage, now and then a short retrogression; but as to the general tendency there can be no doubt. A single breaker may recede, but the tide is evidently coming in. | times what, in the time of Oliver Cromwell had been thought intolerably oppressive. To almost all men the state of things under which they have been used to live seems to be the necessary state of things. We have heard it said that five per cent. is the natural interest of money, that twelve is the natural number of a jury, that forty shillings is the natural qualification of a county voter. Hence it is that, though in every age everybody knows that up to his own time progressive improvement has been taking place, nobody seems to reckon on any improvement during the next generation. We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error, who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason. "A million a year will beggar us," said the patriots of 1640. "Two millions a year will grind the country to powder," was the cry in 1660. "Six millions a year, and a debt of fifty millions!" exclaimed Swift; "the high allies have been the ruin of us.” "A hundred and forty millions of debt!" said Junius; more than we shall ever pay, if we owe him such a load as this." "Two hundred and forty millions of debt!" cried all the statesmen of 1783 in chorus; "what abilities, or what economy on the part of a minister, can save a country so burdened?" We know that if, since 1783, no fresh debt had been incurred, the increased resources of the country would have enabled us to defray that burden at which Pitt, Fox, and Burke stood aghast to defray it over and over again, and that with much lighter taxation than what we have actually borne. On what principle is it, that when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are te expect nothing but deterioration before us? If we were to prophesy that in the year 1930, a population of fifty millions, better fed, clad, and lodged than the English of our time, will cover these islands; that Sussex and Huntingdonshire will be wealthier than the wealthiest parts of the West-Riding of Yorkshire now are; that cultivation, rich as that of a flowergarden, will be carried up to the very tops of Ben Nevis and Helvellyn; that machines, constructed on principles yet undiscovered, will be in every house; that there will be no high-"well may we say that we owe Lord Chatham ways but railroads, no travelling but by steam; and our debt, vast as it seems to us, will appear to our great-grandchildren a trifling encumbrance, which might easily be paid off in a year or two, many people would think us insane. We prophesy nothing; but this we say-If any person had told the Parliament which met in perplexity and terror after the crash in 1720, that in 1830 the wealth of England would surpass all their wildest dreams; that the annual revenue would equal the principal of that debt which they considered as an intolerable burden; that for one man of 10,000l. then living, there would be five men of 50,000l.; that London would be twice as large and twice as populous, and that nevertheless the mortality would have diminished to one-half what it then was; that the postoffice would bring more into the exchequer than the excise and customs had brought in together under Charles II.; that stage-coaches would run from London to York in twenty-four hours; that men would sail without wind, and would be beginning to ride without horses, our ancestors would have given as much credit to the prediction as they gave to Gulliver's Travels. Yet the prediction would have been true; and they would have perceived that it was not altogether absurd if they had considered that the country was then raising every year a sum which would have purchased the fee-simple of the revenue of the Plantagenets, ten times what supported the government of Elizabeth, three It is not by the intermeddling of Mr. Southey's idol, the omniscient and omnipotent State, but by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilization; and it is to the same prudence and the same energy that we now look with comfort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the people by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties; by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities' their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment; by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the government do this-the people will assuredly do the rest MOORE'S LIFE OF LORD BYRON.* [EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1831.} We have read this book with the greatest pleasure. Considered merely as a composition, it deserves to be classed among the best specimens of English prose which our age has produced. It contains, indeed, no single passage equal to two or three which we could select from the Life of Sheridan. But, as a whole, it is immeasurably superior to that work. The style is agreeable, clear, and manly; and when it rises into eloquence, rises without effort or ostentation. Nor is the matter inferior to the manner. general epistles, meant to be read by a large circle, we expected to find them clever and spirited, but deficient in ease. We looked with vigilance for instances of stiffness in the language, and awkwardness in the transitions. We have been agreeably disappointed; and we must confess, that if the epistolary style of Lord Byron was artificial, it was a rare and admirable instance of that highest art, which cannot be distinguished from nature. The pretty fable by which the Duchess of Orleans illustrates the character of her son the regent, might, with little change, be applied to Byron. All the fairies, save one, had been bidden to his cradle. All the gossips had been profuse of their gifts. One had bestowed nobility, another genius, a third beauty. The malignant elf who had been uninvited came last, and, unable to reverse what her sisters had Of the deep and painful interest which this book excites, no abstract can give a just no It would be difficult to name a book which tion. So sad and dark a story is scarcely to be exhibits more kindness, fairness, and modesty. found in any work of fiction; and we are littl It has evidently been written, not for the pur-disposed to envy the moralist who can read i pose of showing, what, however, it often shows, without being softened. how well its author can write; but for the purpose of vindicating, as far as truth will permit, the memory of a celebrated man who can no longer vindicate himself. Mr. Moore never thrusts himself between Lord Byron and the public. With the strongest temptations to egotism, he has said no more about himself than the subject absolutely required. A great part, indeed the greater part of these volumes, consists of extracts from the Letters and Jour-done for their favourite, had mixed up a curse nals of Lord Byron; and it is difficult to speak with every blessing. In the rank of Lord too highly of the skill which has been shown Byron, in his understanding, in his character, in the selection and arrangement. We will in his very person, there was a strange union not say that we have not occasionally remark- of opposite extremes. He was born to all that ed in these two large quartos an anecdote men covet and admire. But in every one of which should have been omitted, a letter those eminent advantages which he possessed which should have been suppressed, a name over others, there was mingled something of which should have been concealed by aste- misery and debasement. He was sprung from risks; or asterisks which do not answer the a house, ancient indeed and noble, but depurpose of concealing the name. But it is graded and impoverished by a series of crimes impossible, on a general survey, to deny that and follies, which had attained a scandalous the task has been executed with great judg- publicity. The kinsman whom he succeeded ment and great humanity. When we consider had died poor, and, but for merciful judges, the life which Lord Byron had led, his petu- would have died upon the gallows. The young lance, his irritability, and his communicative-peer had great intellectual powers; yet there ness, we cannot but admire the dexterity with which Mr. Moore has contrived to exhibit so much of the character and opinions of his friend, with so little pain to the feelings of the living. was an unsound part in his mind. He had naturally a generous and tender heart; but his temper was wayward and irritable. He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the The extracts from the journals and corres- streets mimicked. Distinguished at once by the pondence of Lord Byron are in the highest de-strength and by the weakness of his intellect, gree valuable--not merely on account of the affectionate yet perverse, a poor lord, and a information which they contain respecting the handsome cripple, he required, if ever man re distinguished man by whom they were written, quired, the firmest and the most judicious trainbut on account, also, of their rare merit as coming. But, capriciously as nature had dealt positions. The Letters, at least those which were sent from Italy, are among the best in our language. They are less affected than those of Pope and Walpole; they have more matter in them than those of Cowper. Knowing that many of them were not written merely for the person to whom they were directed, but were with him, the relative to whom the office of forming his character was intrusted was more capricious still. She passed from paroxysms of rage to paroxysms of fondness. At one time she stifled him with her caresses, at another time she insulted his deformity. He came into the world, and the world treated him as his mother treated him-sometimes with kind* Letters and Journals of Lord Byron; with Notices of his Life. BY THOMAS MOORE, ESQ. 2 vols. 4to. Lon-ness, sometimes with severity, never with don: 1830, justice. It indulged him without discrimina tion, and punished him without discrimination. | form any judgment on a transaction which is He was truly a spoiled child; not merely the, so imperfectly known to us. It would have spoiled child of his parents, but the spoiled been well if, at the time of the separation, all child of nature, the spoiled child of fortune, the those who knew as little about the matter then spoiled child of fame, the spoiled child of so- as we know about it now, had shown that forciety. His first poems were received with a bearance, which, under such circumstances, is contempt which, feeble as they were, they did but common justice. not absolutely deserve. The poem which he published on his return from his travels, was, on the other hand, extolled far above its merits. At twenty-four he found himself on the highest pinnacle of literary fame, with Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and a crowd of other distinguished writers, beneath his feet. There is scarcely an instance in history of so sudden a rise to so dizzy an eminence. Every thing that could stimulate, and every thing that could gratify the strongest propensities of our nature-the gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms, the acclamations of the whole nation, the applause of applauded men, the love of the loveliest women-all this world, and all the glory of it, were at once offered to a young man, to whom nature had given violent passions, and whom education had never taught to control them. He lived as many men live who have no similar excuses to plead for their faults. But his countrymen and his countrywomen would love him and admire him. They were resolved to see in his excesses only the flash and outbreak of that same fiery mind which glowed in his poetry. He attacked religion; yet in religious circles his name was mentioned with fondness, and in many religious publications his works were censured with singular tenderness. He lampooned the Prince Regent; yet he could not alienate the Tories. Every thing, it seemed, was to be forgiven to youth, rank, and genius. Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its indignation as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had been worshipped with an irrational idolatry. He was persecuted with an irrational fury. Much has been written about those unhappy domestic occurrences which decided the fate of his life. Yet nothing ever was positively known to the public, but this--that he quarrelled with his lady, and that she refused to live with him. There have been hints in abundance, and shrugs and shakings of the head, and "Well, well, we know," and "We could an if we would," and "If we list to speak," and "There be that might an they list." But we are not aware that there is before the world, substantiated by credible, or even by tangible evidence, a single fact indicating that Lord Byron was more to blame than any other man who is on bad terms with his wife. The professional men whom Lady Byron consulted were undoubtedly of opinion that she ought not to live with her husband. But it is to be remembered that they formed that opinion without hearing both sides. We do not say, we do not mean to insinuate that Lady Byron was in any respect to blame. We think that those who condemn her on the evidence which is now before the public, are as rash as those who condemn her husband. We will not pronounce any judgment; we cannot, even in our own minds, We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, elopements, divorces, and family quarrels pass with little notice. We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. But once in six or seven years, our virtue becomes outrageous. We cannot suffer the laws of religion and decency to be violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must teach libertines, that the English people appreciate the importance of domestic ties. Accordingly, some unfortunate man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose offences have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an expiatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. He is, in truth, a sort of whippingboy, by whose vicarious agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very complacently on our own severity, and compare with great pride the high standard of morals established in England, with the Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our victim is ruined and heart-broken. And our virtue goes quietly to sleep for seven years more. It is clear that those vices which destroy domestic happiness ought to be as much as possible repressed. It is equally clear that they cannot be repressed by penal legislation. It is therefore right and desirable that public opinion should be directed against them. But it should be directed against them uniformly, steadily, and temperately, not by sudden fits and starts. There should be one weight and one measure. Decimation is always an objectionable mode of punishment. It is the resource of judges too indolent and hasty to investigate facts, and to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. It is an irrational practice, even when adopted by military tribunals. When adopted by the tribunal of public opinion, it is infinitely more irrational. It is good that a certain portion of disgrace should constantly attend on certain bad actions. But it is not good that the offenders merely have to stand the risks of a lottery of infamy; that ninety-nine out of every hundred should escape; and that the hundredth, perhaps the most innocent of the hundred, should pay for all. We remember to have seen a mob assem bled in Lincoln's Inn to hoot a gentleman, against whom the most oppressive proceeding known to the English law was then in progress. He was hooted because he had been an indifferent and unfaithful husband, as if some of the most popular men of the age, Lord Nelson, for example, had not been indifferent and unfaithful husbands. We remember a still stronger case. Will posterity believe, that in an age in which men, whose gallantries were universally known, and had been legally proved, filled some of the highest offices in the state, and in the army, presided at the meetings of religious and benevolent institutions, were the delight of every society, and the favourites of the multitude, a crowd of moralists went to the theatre, in order to pelt a poor actor for disturbing the conjugal felicity of an alderman? What there was in the circumstances, either of the offender or of the sufferer, to vindicate the zeal of the audience, we could never conceive. It has never been supposed that the situation of an actor is peculiarly favourable to the rigid virtues, or that an alderman enjoys any special immunity from injuries such as that which on this occasion roused the anger of the public. But such is the justice of mankind. decay of nobler natures, hastened to their re past; and they were right; they did after their kind. It is not every day that the savage envy of aspiring dunces is gratified by the agonies of such a spirit and the degradation of such a name. The unhappy man left his country forever. The howl of contumely followed him across the sea, up the Rhine, over the Alps; it gradually waxed fainter; it died away. Those who had raised it began to ask each other, what, after all, was the matter about which they had been so clamorous; and wished to invite back the criminal whom they had just chased from them. His poetry became more popular than it had ever been; and his complaints were read with tears by thousands and tens of thousands who had never seen his face. In these cases, the punishment was excesHe had fixed his home on the shores of the sive; but the offence was known and proved. Adriatic, in the most picturesque and interestThe case of Lord Byron was harder. True ing of cities, beneath the brightest of skies, Jedwood justice was dealt out to him. First and by the brightest of seas. Censoriousness came the execution, then the investigation, and was not the vice of the neighbours whom he last of all, or rather not at all, the accusation. had chosen. They were a race corrupted by The public, without knowing any thing what- a bad government and a bad religion; long reever about the transactions in his family, flew nowned for skill in the arts of voluptuousness, into a violent passion with him, and proceeded and tolerant of all the caprices of sensuality. to invent stories which might justify its anger. From the public opinion of the country of his Ten or twenty different accounts of the sepa- adoption he had nothing to dread. With the ration, inconsistent with each other, with public opinion of the country of his birth he themselves, and with common sense, circu- was at open war. He plunged into wild and lated at the same time. What evidence there desperate excesses, ennobled by no generous might be for any one of these, the virtuous or tender sentiment. From his Venetian harem people who repeated them neither knew nor he sent forth volume after volume, full of elocared. For in fact these stories were not the quence, of wit, of pathos, of ribaldry, and of causes, but the effects of the public indigna- bitter disdain. His health sank under the tion. They resembled those loathsome slanders effects of his intemperance. His hair turned which Goldsmith, and other abject libellers of gray. His food ceased to nourish him. A the same class, were in the habit of publishing | hectic fever withered him up. It seemed that about Bonaparte-how he poisoned a girl with his body and mind were about to perish toarsenic, when he was at the military school-gether. how he hired a grenadier to shoot Dessaix at Marengo-how he filled St. Cloud with all the pollutions of Capres. There was a time when anecdotes like these obtained some credence from persons, who, hating the French Emperor without knowing why, were eager to believe any thing which might justify their hatred. Lord Byron fared in the same way. His countrymen were in a bad humour with him. His writings and his character had lost the charm of novelty. He had been guilty of the offence which, of all offences, is punished more severely; he had been over-praised; he had excited too warm an interest; and the public, with its usual justice, chastised him for its own folly. The attachments of the multitude bear no small resemblance to those of the wanton enchantress in the Arabian Tales, who, when the forty days of her fondness were over, was not content with dismissing her lovers, out condemned them to expiate, in loathsome shapes, and under severe punishments, the crime of having once pleased her too well. The obloquy which Byron had to endure was such as might well have shaken a more constant mind. The newspapers were filled with lampoons. The theatres shook with execrations. He was excluded from circles where he had lately been the observed of all observAll those creeping things that riot in the From this wretched degradation he was in some measure rescued by an attachment, culpable indeed, yet such as, judged by the standard of morality established in the country where he lived, might be called virtuous. But an imagination polluted by vice, a temper imbittered by misfortune, and a frame habituated to the fatal excitement of intoxication, prevented him from fully enjoying the happiness which he might have derived from the purest and most tranquil of his many attachments. Midnight draughts of ardent spirits and Rhenish wines had begun to work the ruin of his fine intellect. His verse lost much of the energy and condensation which had distinguished it. But he would not resign, without a struggle, the empire which he had exercised over the men of his generation. A new dream of ambition arose before him, to be the centre of a literary party; the great mover of an intellectual revolution; to guide the public mind of England from his Italian retreat, as Voltaire had guided the public mind of France from the villa of Ferney. With this hope, as it should seem, he established The Liberal. But powerfully as he had affected the imaginations of his contemporaries, he mistook his own powers, if he hoped to direct their opinions: and he still more grossly mistook his own disposition, if he thought that he could long act |