Catharine. Those distinguished perfons had vices enough, both public and private; and were rather given to interfere with their neighbours, from other motives than thofe of pure philanthropy. We still talk of them, however, not only with patience, but with admiration, and manifeft a liberal indulgence to their failings, while we invoke all the lightnings of heaven on the head of their more formidable fucceffor. Now this, we muft fay, is very partial and childish, and altogether unworthy of the character of the nation, and the conteft in which we are engaged. Its moft pernicious effect, is in relaxing the vigilant anxiety of our preparation; but it deferves alfo to be reprobated, as throwing unneceffary obftacles in the way of that pacification to which we must ultimately look forward, and in indifpofing us to copy from the enemy. thofe things which may be neceffary for our preservation.

In considering how we are to oppose that torrent of success, which has hitherto overborhe all the bulwarks that have been erected to restrain it, it is neither useless nor unnatural to inquire to what that success has been owing. We may thus be enabled either to discover the vulnerable point of the enemy, or to borrow for ourselves a like invulnerability; to anticipate the decay of what as yet seems to have been constantly growing in strength; or to adopt such arrangements as may raise us to a corresponding degree of force and reputation.

We may talk now of the immense accession of territory and population which France has recently received; of the military discipline that is established over all that vast empire; and of the enor mous armies which have been trained to victory in the incessant and extended wars of fifteen years. These, no doubt, are formi dable items in the account current of her greatness; but they are rather the fruits of her success, than the causes of it. France, under her old government, was more populous, and more unanimous, and possessed more disciplined soldiers, than in the first of her revolutionary contests; yet, in that distracted and tumultuous state, she overthrew the finest armies in Europe, and established her dominion over provinces which her monarchs had vainly coveted for several generations before. It is to the revolution itself then, and its effects on the interior structure of society, that we are inclined to ascribe the greatness and the successes of France. By that great concussion, the whole talents of the nation were set at liberty, and rose, by their natural buoyancy, to the higher regions of the state. The ruin and confusion which it produced, did not prevent this effect from taking place; and whatever the nation may have lost in point of internal comfort or happiness, there can be no doubt that it has gained inconceivably in point of force and activity as a state. This is an advantage which all new governments

governments possess, to counterbalance the many disadvantages to which they are obviously liable. They are generally insecure, and often oppressive; but they are almost always administered with ability, and are strong and efficient in all their measures of public policy.

The fact is now pretty generally admitted: and the theory does not lye very deep. No man can win a place, who does not deserve to occupy it; but he may succeed to it, without any such qualification. A man cannot make a fortune, without money-getting talents; but he may inherit it, without any other dispositions than those of squandering and improvidence. The case is precisely the same as to public functions and political power. In regular and established governments, they are often given, and must often be given, to rank, and to wealth, and to personal influence, without any great regard to superior fitness or ability. In the first formation of society, or in its second formation, in the event of a radical revolution, no such thing is practicable. Places are not given them, but taken; they are not inherited, but won and rank and wealth, and adventitious influence being annihilated, the only competition is as to personal qualifications; and the only test of their existence is their actual operation and display. All extensive governments, when considered with relation to their functionaries and administrators, are necessarily of the nature of aristocracies; but all aristocracies, at their first formation, are necessarily composed of the strong and the subtle-of those who are powerful or active. Imbecility can by no possibility have a place in them; negligence or incapacity operate a spontaneous exclusion. The race is then always to the swift, and the battle to the strong. That it is otherwise afterwards, is apparent; and though the reasons, why it is so, are not very remote nor abstruse, it may be instructive to trace their operation a little more carefully and minutely, than we have often patience to do in these broad and general speculations.

All civilized governments may be divided into free and arbitrary: or, more accurately for our present purpose, into the government of England and the other European governments. All these, we suppose, were suitably administered in the beginning. The most famous warrior would be king; the next in prowess and reputation would be earls and generals: he who could write best would be chancellor; and he who had the greatest gift of prayer, would be court chaplain or archbishop. The same principle would regulate all the inferior conditions: the first captains, we have no doubt, were taller and more expert than the serjeants; and they than the soldiers in the ranks. The acquisition of wealth, and the establishment of hereditary right, made a great change

in these particulars. A cast, called nobility, was formed, from which alone all the great functionaries of government could be appointed in most countries of Europe; and in process of time, the more important charges could only be given among a small number of families. This produced a twofold effect on the government; in both its branches most prejudicial to its vigour and prosperity. In the first place, by narrowing prodigiously the range of selection, it diminished in the same proportion the chance of a suitable appointment; and, in the second place, by securing in a great degree such appointments to persons of a certain rank and connexion, it excused them from the labour of acquiring those qualifications, which would have been indispensable in the case of a fair competition, and took away the only effectual motive by which they could have been excited, to make themselves fit for the situations to which they aspired. It is well known, accordingly, that over the greater part of the Continent, commands and embassies, and almost all the momentous employments on which the welfare of a state is necessarily dependent, were claimed as appendages of a certain rank and situation, and were considered as altogether out of the reach of low-born ambition. For a long while, this had the effect of repressing, in the great body of the nation, all those habits and talents by which men could be qualified for public situations; and, for several centuries, the Continent of Europe presented the uniform spectacle of a stupid and brutish commonalty, submitting, without murmuring, to the dominion of a capricious and ignorant nobility. At last, as society enlarged, and the common business of men came to require some degree of intellectual exertion, the absurdity of such an arrangement grew visible, and its consequences began to be felt. Men began to mock at the follies of their rulers, and to aspire to be their correctors. A few situations were every where gradually abandoned to industry and talent; and the princes and nobles became somewhat less ignorant and presumptuous. The whole real power and administration of the state, however, continued in the hands of the privileged orders; and the people, increasing in talent and intelligence much. more rapidly than in political influence, came to be ranged in some measure in hostility to their governors, and to be looked upon in return with new feelings of distrust and jealousy. This was the state of things in France immediately before the revolution; and was undoubtedly the true efficient cause of that prodigious explosion. With an immense body of information and genius in the nation, they saw the administration shifted from one set of incapables to another; and, sanguine from inexperience, and exasperated by opposition, they rushed forward to the redemption of the coun

try

try with an impetuosity that occasioned its ruin. In the scenes of outrage and confusion that followed, private happiness, and perhaps private morality, was violently invaded and endangered: many absurdities and many atrocities were committed; but the great object was effected, of placing the highest talents in the highest situations; and appointing the officers of government, if not with a view to the good of the governed, at least with a view to the duties which they had to perform. Every antient ground of exclusion was entirely done away; and all the talent and enterprize of the nation was put in requisition for the service of government, by the mere notoriety of the fact, that it would be employed as soon as it made good its pretensions. It is by this talent, and by this enterprize, that France has hitherto gone on conquering and to conquer, we are afraid, unless the talent and the enterprize of her adversaries is set free for the contest, by a more cautious repetition of the experiment by which her force has been redoubled.

The other nations of the Continent are, as France was fifty years before the revolution; bestowing every important employment on the order of nobility exclusively, and naming their generals and ministers, with scarcely any exception, from among a small number of court-favourites or powerful families. The people at large is either quite destitute of the talents, for which there is neither reward nor employment; or it begins to feel discontented at the exclusion, and to look upon its own rights and interests as distinct from those of its rulers. With us the case is somewhat different; and it is necessary to consider in what the difference consists.

All the causes of which we have fpoken have operated in England as well as elsewhere: they muft operate wherever a regular -government has been long eftablished, and wherever wealth and dignity is tranfmitted from generation to generation: but they have operated to a much fmaller extent and the vigour, which cannot be communicated to the Continent, perhaps, without the expense of a revolution, may be infufed into England by an enlightened adminiftration of her existing government.

In England, there is no exclufion on account of birth; and little on the ground of what is properly termed court-favour. There is no abfolute exclufion, indeed, of any kind; and any man may afpire to any fituation in the country. Wealth and political influence, however, are almoft neceffary to ensure his fuccefs in any of the higher departments. We are aware that a certain degree of wealth is neceffary, in all countries, to fupport pretenfions of a certain magnitude; but we allude now chiefly to the practice of felling commiffions in the army, and other fituations of still great

er

er importance, which we believe to be peculiar to this country. The effect of fuch ufages, in excluding and difcouraging the fair pretenfions of talent, is too obvious to ftand in need of illuftration; but by far the moft formidable obftruction to the free use of our intellectual refources, arises from the peculiar nature of our popular conftitution, and the general administration of our mixed government.

It is perfectly well known, that there always is in this country a large party oppofed to thofe who are in the actual administration of affairs. This party confifts of thofe members of the legiflature who themselves afpire to fill the higheft offices of the government; and of thofe individuals throughout the country who concur in their general maxims of policy, or are attached to them from motives of a more perfonal nature. The numbers and ftrength of this party are liable, of courfe, to variation; but it may reasonably be eftimated, in modern times, to comprehend about one third of the whole nation. Here, then, is one great fource of exclufion, which operates, with us, far more extenfively than in any other country. Those who are in poffeffion of power, and entitled to nominate to the great and influencing employments in the government, cannot be expected to bestow them on their political enemies; and thus one third part of the whole populaflon of the country, comprehending perhaps a ftill larger proportion of its talent, is loft to the public fervice, and as completely profcribed and excluded as the plebeian claffes are in the old ariftocratical governments of the Continent. If there was a free choice, however, or a fair competition among those who belong to the party in power, there would be lefs reafon for lamenting this partial exclufion; but the existence of an oppofite party, and the neceffity of refifting its increase, has a ftill more pernicious effect in narrowing the competition for employment. Among thofe of their own adherents to whom the exifting diftributors of great employments might affign them, there may be fome who are eminently qualified to fill them with ability; and fome whofe ambitious pretenfions it may be of the utmost importance to gratify. In fuch a dilemma it is not to be expected that merit will prevail; nay, the more virtuous and patriotic the adminiftration may be, the lefs chance will it have for prevailing; fince it will always occur as an irrefiftible argument, that it is better to fubmit to the inconvenience of having one infufficient functionary in the state, than to run the risk of difplacing the whole adminiftration by dif gufting fome of its most powerful fupporters. This general fketch is enough to explain our meaning to thofe who have attended to the fubject; but it is right to unfold it a little more diftinctly.