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jesty and his ministers submissively, as Menage, an ancient French writer, tells us, in his time, the Duke D'Use did the queen regent, who, when she asked him what hour it was, answered, Madame, what hour your Majesty pleases!'"

It will be in the recollection of our readers, how infidelity in France supervened upon superstition, until it gradually undermined both the throne and the altar. The church was regarded as an instrument of state; and the abuse of patronage rapidly led to a corruption of morals both amongst clergy and people. These effects Dr. Madden foresaw as clearly as if he had studied the writings of the encyclopedists; and seems to have, with an instinctive sagacity, estimated at its full amount, the force of that popular reaction which was so soon to level to the ground all obnoxious establishments. The concluding portion of the following extract, which we may now read by the light of events, is full fraught with moral and political wisdom :

"Certainly, when the king and the ministers find their account in imitating the maxims of Venice, keeping the interest of the clergy low, and their persons contemptible, religion and the influence of the mitre will be utterly absorbed in reason of state and the power of the crown; and the subjects must necessarily become equally sceptical in their belief, corrupt in their principles, and immoral in the conduct of their lives. Now, though this will evidently lessen the unreasonable authority of the Pope and the Church with the nation, yet, whether such measures will not, at the same time, unloose the sacred bonds by which religion ties the allegiance of the people to the supreme magistrate, and make them bad subjects in proportion as they are bad Christians, is worth the consideration of the mighty Machiavels of France."

This is surely a wisdom which saw, in embryo, the mighty changes and convulsions which afterwards took place in France, and from the very causes which he indicates. In the following we have what may be called a retrospective anticipation of the French Revolution, which Dr. Madden contemplates as having taken place at the precise period when it actually affrighted the world:

"By such a model as this, great

things might be done here, to drive out the impertinence of reading and study; and in a few years we might see this reign rival that of Louis the Seventeenth when learning, and religion, and arts, were so happily banished that kingdom; and infidelity united all its divided schisms and parties, in one general league against superstition, pedantry, and priestcraft, or, in other words, against piety, virtue, and knowledge."

Louis the Seventeenth! The child who never reigned! Whose piteous fate it was to be consigned to "the tender mercies" of a wretch devoid of all humanity; who best recommended himself to the sanguinary monsters by whom he was employed, by a refinement of barbarity in his treatment of his ill-starred captive, of which the annals of human brutality and wickedness afford no more harrowing example!

If this statement stood alone, it would pass for no more than a lucky guess, of which the accidental verification should not surprise us; but, connected as it is with the examples already given of a far-seeing sagacity, it is impossible to refuse Dr. Madden the credit of having foreseen and calculated with almost exact chronological precision, both the events and the period of the French Revolution.

In the extreme democracy of the constitution of Poland, he discerned the germs of decay; and although he does not, in so many words, foretel the partition, he describes such a state of things as quite inconsistent with any notion of its long continuance as an independent kingdom. The following are his scarcely less than prophetic words:

"As that crown is soon to be set up for sale, I hear there are already as many new kings set up amongst them, as ever were made on a twelfth-night for diversion; and will, probably, have the same fate, and be unkinged again, when their parties, that set them up, are tired of them and their silly play, and sick of the puppets they have created."

Of French fashions, we have the following whimsical account, aptly descriptive of the cameleon levity by which that versatile people are characterised:

"It would be entertaining to write a history of the fashions for the last four years I resided here; and I am confident it would make a little folio, to go through them all in their different reigns and seasons. High stays, low stays, and no stays; short-waisted, longwaisted stays; short, mid-leg, all-leg, no-leg petticoats; broad lace, narrow lace, Flanders lace, English lace, Spanish lace, no lace; fringes, knotings, edgings; high heads, low heads; threepinners, two-pinners, one-pinner; much powder, all powder, little powder, no powder; mantuas with a tail, want-atail, false tail; four flounces, three flounces, two flounces, no flounce; wide sleeves, straight sleeves, long sleeves, short sleeves; many ribbons, all ribbons, few ribbons, broad ribbons, narrow ribbons, rich ribbons, plain ribbons, flowered ribbons, stamped ribbons, no ribbons. Such a noble and important work as this, with the dates and rise of every fashion, the councils that decreed it, the authors and the inventors; and the vast revolutions it produced in the political word: and dedicated to the lovely Duchess Monbazon, who is able, my lord, to prescribe what fashions she pleases, both to her own sex and ours, would, I am sure, raise more subscriptions than the works of Cicero or Livy."

Let the reader endeavour to picture to himself the meagreness of the diurnal and hebdomadal press, in the early portion of the eighteenth century, as compared with its present prodigious extent and augmentation; and then say, whether the sagacity was at fault, which predicted such a resultand whether the following pithy description of it, is not as characteristic of our own country, as the changes of fashion set forth in the foregoing, is of our gayer and more lively neigh

bours:

"It was really a surprise to me to see such a vast spawn of the productions of these insects, that thus float and feed upon the air we breathe, and have no appearance of existence, but in their constant buzzing about, hearkening out, attending, and listening to, the noise and motions of their neighbours. They seem to make their ears as useful to them as the pygmies, which Pigafetta tells us he found in the Island of Aruchet, near to Moluccas, who lived in dark caverns (like the garrets, I suppesc, of these authors), and lay upon one ear for a bed, and covered themselves, by way of warm bed clothes, with the other."

When it is recollected that the above was written long before parlia mentary reporting was thought of, and when our press was little more than a record of births, deaths, and marriages, some court news, and anecdotes of some remarkable men-it will be allowed, that the prescience which could contemplate it in its present developed state, was, indeed, not a little surprising.

Of our colonies, then few and thinly. peopled, let those who are best acquainted with their history and rise, say whether the following were not sagacious anticipations:

"The truth is, our colonies abroad have, and are likely to acquire still, such an increase of hands and strength, that the greatest care will be necessary to keep the strongest of them dependant; and yet to provide that the weakest of them may not live on the blood and spirits of the nation: nor suck, if I may use the allusion, on her breast too long."

And again :

"I am confident, as they will require, so they will deserve, and fully repay, this care. Besides the advantage of the commerce, and the navigation betwixt us, it is certain they generally, in proportion, produce greater, more sublime and warlike spirits; as being composed of adventurous and daring people, or, at worst, of melancholy dispositions; which last (to say nothing of the other, who must evidently be of service to us) are the best seed-bed for ingenious and inventive, as well as learned and ju dicious heads."

The Romanising tendencies of many of the pious and learned of our clergy and laity of the present day, together with the causes to which they owe their origin, are thus intimated :

"Your excellency, who is so well acquainted with the history of your own country, will be better able to judge of such consequences by the reign of Fre derick the Third, in the nineteenth century; when the miserable infection that had corrupted both the lives and the faith of one part of our people, had driven the other to an absolute revolt in their allegiance and principles to Rome and her superstitions."

We believe that what is called the

Puseyite movement could not be better described, both in its origin and its tendency, than in these words. A latitudinarianism, whose toleration of sects amounted to intolerance of an establishment, gave rise to grave questionings respecting church principles ; which, when taken up by men of hasty judgments, or heated, narrow minds, ended in subjection to a system of dogmatic belief, which overruled both reason and scripture. That many sagacious reasoners of the present day should have foreseen such a result, when the fiercest enemies of the Church were freely admitted into parliament, can cause no surprise. But, that such a contingency should have been, as above, distinctly intimated, as the natural and necessary result of a laxity or decline of faith, more than one hundred years before such admission, must surely excite our admiration.

That the Greek Church in Russia would attract the zeal of Romish missionaries, it was natural to conjecture; and Dr. Madden accordingly represents the Jesuits as making great inroads upon the domain of the eastern heresiarchs. Nor is it possible to contemplate what has been done in our day, in obtaining, for the principles of Romanism, admission into the dominions of the czar, wherever an excuse for so doing was afforded by a mixed population, without admitting that, to a considerable extent, his conjectures have been verified by results, although not quite so much so as he expected.

The machinery which he conceives to have been set in operation with this view, was, we are fain to believe, intended quite as much to teach his own church how the true faith should be preserved, as to show how, by the Church of Rome, a corrupted faith had been extended.

The instruments employed are able and learned men, all whose powers are concentered upon the one object. These make themselves, in a variety of ways, useful to the autocrat, and win his respect and confidence. By their advice, seminaries for the clergy are established, which they take good care shall be superintended by their own creatures. Thus, whatever the book lessons that may be learned, the teaching will be sure to subserve their

ends. By a provident care for the interests of the poorer clergy, they obtain great influence over them. And by judicious regulations respecting the disposal of patronage, they ensure that, in all human probability, the most advantageous disposition of it will be made. The following description of a place-hunting clergy was surely not intended for Russia alone; nor can it be read without a shrewd suspicion that, even at the present day, the race is not quite extinct amongst ourselves :

"There are in all churches, and especially in this, a kind of very managing and managable divines, who pay their court to interest or power whereever they find it; by a servile obsequiousness in prostituting their pens and their pulpits to defend or explode all tenets, as they are convenient and proper for present times, or the present views of their masters. They are a race of creatures who are still mighty sticklers for all seasonable local truths or temporal verities; and are too often found the usefulest tools that ever were set at work by the Machiavels of the world. However, the malice of some envious people nick name them, sometimes, the professors of Engathromythic divinity, and rail at them a little severely as teaching trencher truths; and writing and preaching from that lower kind of inspiration, which has set so many great souls at work, and fills the head with the fumes of the belly."

To the great ability of many of the Jesuits, and their vast power in sustaining the papal systein, he bears frequent testimony, while the wit of Pascal himself was not more keen and piercing in detecting their sophistry and unravelling their wiles. "Corruptio optimi passima ;" and the more they are capable of good, the less are they excusable in doing evil :

"To see," he says, "such excellent instruments turned to corrupt our morals, and wound religion, and raise factions, schisms, and rebellions in the earth, to serve their own ambition, must raise every one's indignation. 'Tis a detestable perverting of wit and reason, and all the powers of the human mind, from the noble purposes they were given us for by heaven, to the worst that could be suggested by hell; and bears a near resemblance to their practice, who make use of that soul of

vegetation and basis of nutriment, the nitre of the earth, and convert it into gunpowder for the destruction of their fellow-creatures.

"The savage nations in America are said to make war on their neighbours, who do not use the same customs and speak the same language; but these gentlemen go a few steps farther, and pursue you to death, nay, beyond the grave, because you do not think as they do (a matter in no man's power), in speculative points of their own contriving and imposing. For, after all, my lord, they have not only made a perfect manufacture of this commodity, but a monopoly too; and have managed with their faith, as to the world, as the French king has done with his salt, as to his subjects. At first it lay ready in every creek-a plain, useful, healthful commodity, which all that pleased had for taking up; till, by his absolute power, the king seizes it solely into his own hands, makes it up his own way, and refines it as he thinks proper; and then orders every one, on pain of death, to take such a proportion of it as he thinks necessary for them, whether they want it or not, or whether they will or no; and forbids, under severe penal. ties, that any that's foreign should be imported, and punishes all that make use of any other (though ever so much better), that is privately brought in by strangers."

Of the acts of the British parliament, the introduction of which he anticipates, many have already been passed into laws. Take the following:

"An act for translating all our writs from the old, unintelligible English of the eighteenth century, into our present modern tongue," &c. &c.

This has been accomplished by Sir Robert Peel's revisal and amendment of the penal code.

"A bill for ascertaining the fees of all offices, officers, and counsellors at law, and attorneys."

This, too, has, to a considerable degree, been made subject to legal regulation.

"An act for establishing a public bank for lending small sums of money to the poor, at the lowest interest, to carry on their trades with, such as the Mont de la Pieta at Rome; but by this act no sum larger than ten pounds, or

less than twenty shillings, can be borrowed, and it must be lent upon sufficient pawns, or city security."

Such an act was actually passed, entitled, we believe, the "Charitable Loan Fund Act."

An act for the augmentation of the funds, and the increase in the number of bishopricks-objects which have been partially accomplished by recent

enactments.

"A law for new modelling, and farther confirming and enlarging, the two corporations of the royal fishery and the plantation company, and their rights, privileges, and premiums, as established in the reign of Frederick the First and George the Third." The Hudson Bay Company may be thus characterised, and became chartered and established about the period here indicated.

"An act to take away the privilege of parliament, in case of arrests for debt, when the house is not sitting." We need not add that this subject has been recently taken up by some distinguished men of the legislature, and is at present receiving the gravest consideration.

Nor can we regard the following, which professes to describe a regulation adopted in Russia, but as intended to convey a hint to the politicians of his own country that its legislative enactment would be desirable. It de

scribes, substantially, the act for defining and limiting the qualifications and the practice of the members of different branches of the medical profession, which is at present under the consideration of parliament, and has excited so much public attention:

"And I shall begin with that excellent one of prohibiting all apothecaries to practise, on the severest penalties. For, besides the want of skill in a profession they can never be supposed to be masters of, it is certain those gentlemen used to bestow their attention on the poor Russians, merely with a view to be well paid for their drugs (that would otherwise have rotted on their shelves), just as vintners give a Sunday's dinner to their customers, provided they pay for the wine they drink. After all, my lord, there is, perhaps, as good ground for this law, as for one we have in Great Britain, that forbids drovers to be butchers; it being unreasonable that the same persons who pro

vide the cattle we make use of, should also have liberty to kill."

If the following project has not yet been realised, it is not because it would not have proved very useful. Here the Irish Rabelais is again brought to our rememberance. A royal printinghouse is established, with the view and for the reasons thus described :

"Over the great gate there is a large inscription, in a vast marble table, in which the causes of the foundation are declared to be, the service of religion, the good of the state, and the benefit of the learned world. Then it goes on to say, that as the number of books is infinite, and rather distract than inform the mind, by a mixed and confused reading; some being well writ, but ill books; others, good books, but ill writ; some huddled up in haste, others stinking of the lamp; some without any strength of reasoning, others overloaded with arguments, half of which are insignificant; some books being obscure through too affected a brevity, others perspicuous through an unnecessary redundancy of words (like a bright day at sea, where yet there is nothing to be seen but air and water); some treating on subjects that thousands have handled better before, others publishing useless trifles, because new and unthought of by others; some writing as if they never read anything, others as if they writ nothing but what they read, and then borrowed ;therefore his Majesty decrees no book should be printed within those walls but the works of the ancients, and such only as should be voted most proper by twothirds of the colleges in the two universities, and confirmed by the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury, for the time being."

But there was one thing which Dr. Madden did not foresee; and that was, the Reform Bill. The sublime wisdom which led to that enactment, transcended his limited capacity; and he certainly did not anticipate that the time would ever come, when physical force, under the domination of faction and ignorance, should over-ride both the aristocracy aud the crown. the following he contemplates the continued security of our constitutional form of government, in a manner that seems to prove that his "good genius" could sometime mislead him :

In

"And certainly, as our ancestors used to say, when they were torn in VOL. XXXII.-NO. CXC.

pieces by their senseless divisions, that England could only be ruined by England; so we may as truly maintain, that our happiness, and (that greatest of blessings) our liberties, as now settled under our excellent prince, can never be destroyed but by parliaments; and our Church, as it now stands, fenced in by human laws, and founded on the divine, can only be overturned by the fathers of it, the bishops."

Had the raging tide of democracy, as we now feel it, sounded audibly in his ears, he would have learned how parliament itself might be metamorphosed, until it came to reflect the passions and the prejudices of the populace, rather than the wisdom of the people; and the Church, instead of being cherished and protected by the legislature, be left at the mercy of mountebank or profligate ministers, and become, like the strong man in Scripture, sightless and manacled, the prey and the sport of its enemies.

Of the rapid decay and extinction of the great aristocratic families, he would seem to have been as well aware as if he had lived to study the statistics of the late Michael Thomas Sadleir :

"I have been comparing this last with the ancient ones that remain on record with us, and I am struck with the deepest melancholy when I see so many great and noble families, that once made such a figure in our conntry, washed away by the devouring flood of time; without leaving any more rememberance of their vast fortunes, stately houses, and magnificent equipages, than there is of the very beggars that, in their day, were refused the scraps and crumbs of their tables."

We have now, we trust, enabled our readers to judge for themselves whether, in our estimate of Dr. Madden's far-seeing wisdom, we have used any exaggeration.

It will, we think, be admitted by all, that his was a mind singularly well balanced and perspicuous-" Ponderibus librata suis."

The only other writings of this extraordinary man with which we are acquainted, are "Reflections and Resolutions proper for the Gentlemen of Ireland, as to their conduct for the service of their country, as Landlords, 2 L

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