X. 1822. greater and more irremediable sufferings of the agricul- CHAP. turists had shaken the class hitherto the most firmly attached to existing institutions, and diffused a very general opinion that things could not be worse than they were, and that no alleviation of the evils under which the country laboured could be hoped for till the representation of the people was put on a different footing. Lastly, the general necessity of cheapening everything, to meet the reduced price of produce, had extended itself to freights, and several acts had already passed the Legislature which foreshadowed the repeal of the Navigation Laws, and the abandonment of the system under which England had won the sceptre of the seas, and a colonial empire which encircled the earth. The dawn of the whole future of England is to be found in these three years. 160. donderry real The Marquess of Londonderry was the last minister in Great Britain of the rulers who really governed the State; Lord Lonthat is, of men who took counsel only of their own ideas, was the last and imprinted them on the internal and external policy of the rea of their country. Thenceforward statesmen were guided England. on both sides of the Channel, not by what they deemed right, but what they found practicable; the ruling power was found elsewhere than either in the cabinet or the legislature. Querulous and desponding men, among whom Chateaubriand stands foremost, perceiving this, and comparing the past with the present, concluded that this was because the period of greatness had passed, because the age of giants had been succeeded by that of pigmies; and that men were not directed, because no one able to lead them appeared. But this was a mistake: it was not that the age of great men had ceased, but the age of great causes had succeeded. Public opinion had become irresistible-the press ruled alike the cabinet and the legislature on important questions; where the people were strongly roused, their voice had become omnipotent; on all it gradually but incessantly acted, and in the end modified the opinions of government. VOL. II. 2 L CHAP. X. 1822. The Vox Populi is not always, at the moment, the Vox Dei: it is so only when the period of action has passed, and that of reflection has arisen-when the storms of passion are hushed, and the whisperings of interest no longer of the rulers heard. When the still small voice of experience speaks of thought. in persuasive tones to future generations of men, it will be 161. Increased ascendant 162. ous outbreak of the revolutionary spirit in different countries. discovered, whether the apparent government of the many is more beneficial in its effects than the real government of a few; but this much is certain, that it is their apparent government only. Men seek in vain to escape from the first of human necessities-the necessity of being governed, by establishing democratic institutions. They do not change the direction of the many by the few by the establishment of these they only change the few who direct. The oligarchy of intellect and eloquence comes instead of that of property and influence; happy if it is in reality more wise in its measures and far-seeing in its policy than that which it has supplanted. But it is itself directed by the leaders of thought the real rulers of men appear in those who direct general opinion; and the responsibility of the philosopher or the orator becomes overwhelming when he shares with it that of the statesman and the sovereign. No doubt can remain, upon considering the events in Simultane- the memorable years 1819 and 1820 in Europe, that they were the result of a concerted plan among the revolutionists in Spain, France, Italy, Germany, and England; and that the general overthrow of governments, which occurred in 1848, had been prepared, and was expected, in 1820. The slightest attention to dates proves this in the most decisive manner. The insurrection of Riego at Cadiz broke out on 1st January 1820-that at Corunna on 24th February in the same year-the king was constrained to accept the Constitution on 7th March; Kotzebue was murdered in Germany on 21st March; the revolution of Naples took place on 7th March, that of Piedmont on 7th June; the Duke de 1820. X. 1822. Berri was assassinated on 13th March; émeutes in Paris, CHAP. which so nearly overturned the Government, broke out on 7th June, the military conspiracy on 19th August; the assassination of the English Cabinet was fixed for 19th February by the Cato Street conspirators; the insurrection at Glasgow took place on 3d April. So many April 3, movements of a revolutionary character, occurring so near each other in point of time, in so many different countries, demonstrates either a simultaneous agency of different bodies acting under one common central authority, or a common sense of the advent of a period in an especial manner favourable to the designs which they all had in contemplation. And when it is recollected that the Chambers of France had, by the operation of the coups d'état of 5th September 1816 and March 1819, been so thoroughly rendered democratical that the dethronement of the king and establishment of a republic, by vote of the legislature, was with confidence anticipated when the next fifth had been elected for the Chamber of Deputies, and that distress in Great Britain had become so general, by the operation of the monetary law of 1819, that insurrectionary movements were in preparation in all the great manufacturing towns, and had actually broken out in several,-it must be confessed, that a more favourable time for such a general outbreak could hardly have been selected. 163. characters the diffe And yet, although these revolutionary movements were obviously made in pursuance of a common design, and Different for a common purpose, yet the agents in them, and the of the reparties in each state to which their execution was in-volts in trusted, were widely different. In Great Britain, they rent states. were entirely conducted by the very lowest classes of society; and although they met with apologists and defenders more frequently than might have been expected in the House of Commons, and from a portion of the press, yet no person of respectability or good education was actually implicated in the treasonable proceedings. X. 1822. CHAP. The whole respectable and influential classes were ranged on the other side. But the case was widely different on the Continent. The French revolutionists embraced a large part of the talent, and by far the greater part of the education of the country; and it was their concurrence, as the event afterwards proved, which rendered any insurrectionary movement in that country so extremely formidable. In Spain and Portugal, the principal merchants in the seaport towns, the most renowned generals, and almost the whole officers in the army, were engaged on the revolutionary side, and their adhesion to its enemies in the last struggle left the throne without a defence. In Italy, the ardent and generous youth, and nearly the whole educated classes, were deeply imbued with Liberal ideas, and willing to run any hazard to secure their establishment; and nearly the whole of the young men educated at the German universities had embraced the same sentiments, and longed for the period when the Fatherland was to take its place as the first and greatest of representative governments. Such is the difference between the action of the revolutionary principle upon a constitutional and a despotic monarchy, and such the security which the long enjoyment of freedom affords for the continuance of that blessing to future times. CHAPTER XI. ENGLAND, FRANCE, AND SPAIN, FROM THE ACCESSION OF XI. 1821. 1. of France land in re volution. FRANCE and England, since the peace of 1815, had CHAP. pursued separate paths, and their governments had never as yet been brought into collision with each other. Severally occupied with domestic concerns, oppressed with the Divergence burdens or striving to heal the wounds of war, their gov- and Engernments were amicable, if not cordially united, and no- gard to the thing had as yet occurred which threatened to bring them Spanish Reinto a state of hostility with each other. But the Spanish revolution ere long had this effect. It was viewed with very different eyes on the opposite sides of the Channel. Justly proud of their own constitution, and dating its completion from the Revolution of 1688, which had expelled the Stuarts from the throne-for the most part ignorant of the physical and political circumstances of the Peninsula, which rendered a similar constitution inapplicable to its inhabitants, and deeply imbued with the prevailing delusion of the day, that forms of government were everything, and differences of race nothing-the English had hailed the Spanish revolution with generous enthusiasm, and anticipated the entire resurrection of the Peninsula from the convulsion which seemed to have liberated them from their oppressors. These sentiments were entirely shared by the numerous and energetic party in France, which aimed at expelling the Bourbons, and restoring a |