We would not be understood to disallow any of the strong primary claims which, looked on abstractedly, would seem to call for revolution. But we must protest against the undiscerning and vague language, offensive to reason, which overlooks the whole chain of actual events, to moot abstract points which the writers uniformly misstate. Those able men to whom the world is indebted for the first elements of political economy, are to be exonerated from a direct concern in the crimes and follies of the Revolution; but they were, it is to be observed, enlightened themselves but partially, and in various degrees; and they were but the nucleus to a vapoury train of political enthusiasts. The praise of wisdom or prudence stops perhaps with Turgot. Whatever wise men might have done, the Revolution was the handiwork of madness, vice, and folly, after the first moving impulse given by the parliament of Paris. In their usurping, infatuated, and mob-ridden assemblies, from the Notables to the atrocious Jacobins and Cordeliers, or the fell dictatorship of Robespierre, whatever truth was spoken, or honesty shown, was the occasional protest of some sturdy opponent, like Maury, whose adventurous eloquence reminds the reader of Abdiel reproving the associate fiends.

The eulogists of the French Revolution in that day, and in the present, are equally remarkable for a disregard of events. But they were also, and are still, open to the far graver charge of the same want of principle-the atheism directly involved in all their insane visions of human perfectability-the perversion of science involved in the notion that a whole social system can be annihilated and reconstructed by any human power. Against such charlatanerie and fanaticism, the noble stand made by Mr Burke can hardly be viewed by liberalist understandings as otherwise than a narrow bigotry. The French Revolution, reduced to its facts and to its own actually professed principles, will be found standing on a brief and simple negation of all recognised principles and truths:-That there is no God-that the will of the multitude is the source of right and law-that every one has the right to act according to his own will. This simple creed was faithfully adhered to, which, in its essential tendency, includes both the extremes of license and oppression.

In England, the same spirit was rapidly beginning to diffuse its baleful exhalations. The reasonings of the modern philosophy had a charm for the shallow, on whom it conferred newborn wisdom; on the profligate, whom it restored to the dignity of an easy virtue. If atheism was wanting, deism had then an ample spread in England, and answered all the same purpose: for, pure theism involves no practical principle, and is not a religion, but a philosophy, on the same level with all the other metaphysical systems ever known; that is to say, entirely nugatory. Nor was deism merely prevalent in its own proper form-it was largely disguised in that of Socinianism, a form of natural religion masked under the name, but denying both the principles and doctrines of Christianity. From the same tendencies and opinions with both of these, there grew up in England a lax republicanism, which caught flame from the disorders of France. The effect was considerable in extent, and deep and permanent in the hold it took of the popular intellect; for such diseases have a tendency to spread, and

are too congenial to the human mind to fail in effecting wide alterations. Resting on abnegations, they are easy to the understanding; dissolving restraints-levelling inequalities-dethroning conscience, they flatter the pride, ambition, and passions, of the breast. They all set out with the assumption of all knowledge being founded on abstractions-all power derived from an imaginary consent of an imaginary public-all social institutions from some primary state of nature. It was easy to invent a Deity, a religion, and a civil polity, consequent on such a beginning, and adapted to return to it in theory. Thus it was that these illusions, seemingly unconnected, went hand in hand; and thus ever since have they been combined in their developments.* These causes operated for the moment, as usual, on the popular mass, ignorant in principle, and open to the contagion of every new impulse in the direction of their natural tendencies. They had a more formidable and permanent operation in their effect upon the whigs. Among these, the ignorant, the superficial, the visionary and the heated, became more or less converts to opinions of which the fallacy lay beyond their intellectual seope, and of which the impracticability had not been yet exposed by consequences; while a few more able, but also more ambitious, were ready to avail themselves to any extent of the spirit of the hour.

The moment had at length fully arrived when, to a mind strongly cast and zealous in its decided bent like that of Mr Burke, it was altogether impossible to remain silent. Deeply roused by the current of perilous fallacies which were violently opposed to all he believed and all he knew, it would have been irreconcilable with his character and principles to remain a passive and acquiescent drudge to a party which had first abandoned himself, and then shot madly from its sphere into the maintenance of tenets foreign from all sober and constitutional wisdom. The real results of the French Revolution were become discernible, and it required nothing of that prophetic sagacity for which Mr Burke has been complimented, to see what was to be the end. Priestley, Paine, and Price, men of extraordinary acuteness, subtlety, and powers of popular address, deists and Socinians, and having all the vices and fallacies of the populace on their side, were engaged in spreading wide the contagion. Lesser luminaries of sedition and irreligion were not wanting wherever there was popular credulity; clubs of democrats and infidels were formed having common feelings and common purposes with the Jacobin club of Paris.

Such demonstrations left no room for misapprehension or compromise; it was no time for men of sound minds and constitutional affections to stand drivelling about freedom and popular rights; the question was too plainly about the laws and the constitution, about license and anarchy. And indeed there is one practical truth worth all that can be said on the subject. When the popular mind becomes thoroughly roused into resistance and self-assertion, it is the height of fatuity to measure the probable result by their opinions, or by any

The detailed proof of these reflections would, of course, demand many pages. We only offer them here as the result of our own observation; but we have endeavoured, as much as we could, to shape our statements so as to convey the train of opinion from which we consider them as demonstrable.

consideration of equity or prudence. They will follow their leaders, and these their passions and private motives. A demagogue would set the planet on fire to gain but a pound to his income, or an atom to the weight of his influence.

Mr Burke had also French correspondents who were naturally desirous of his opinion. In his communications with these, his efforts commenced. They were not persons influenced by prejudices hostile to the cause of revolution, from whom misrepresentation of its principles or circumstances might be anticipated. Among the foremost of them was Paine himself, who seems to have omitted no effort to bring over Mr Burke to his own opinions. Others were anxious and observant witnesses, who were in a great measure favourers of the principles, but in some degree alarmed by the incidents which passed under their eyes.

Clearly perceiving that the true limits of remedial reform were already past, and seeing also that false views and unconstitutional tendencies of a popular nature were beginning to spread in England, Mr Burke became alarmed for the possible effects. The most deleterious elements of revolutionary opinion and sentiment found active and powerful sources of propagation in clubs and conventions, under several revolutionary titles, borrowed from the Parisian models, whose language and conduct they adopted and echoed-the Revolution Society, the Constitutional Society, the Club of the 14th of July, &c.; and, to give added power to the alarm of such a state of things, the stain of revolutionary sentiment had obtained a radical hold of the party with which he had been himself connected. In point of fact, this party had undergone a revolution, in the course of some previous years, which it would be hard to explain, without making full allowance for the ordinary effect of time on human things. The early friends and fellow-workers of Mr Burke's early political life had passed away; and others, who had, by the ordinary succession of persons which constitutes the lapse of human life, filled their place, had, from various causes, but most of all from the change of party leaders and combinations of personal character, contracted other predilections and associations. They were no longer the whigs of the American war; but deeply tainted with those maxims and opinions, which we should now describe sufficiently by the modern term “liberalism.”

Finding his personal influence with this party entirely insignificant, and his opinions altogether opposed to them on a subject to which all others then appeared comparatively unimportant,-while he was yet unwilling to accede directly to the other great party which was opposed to them-one course alone remained to Mr Burke. Happily for his fame, and happily for England-we might add, for Europe he could still prove as effective through the press as formerly in the debate. He composed and published a volume which may be best described by the ablest of his opponents. "It is," wrote Mr Mackintosh, "certainly, in every respect, a performance, of which to form a correct estimate, would prove one of the most arduous efforts of critical skill. We scarcely can praise it, or blame it too much. Argument, everywhere dexterous and specious, sometimes grave and profound, clothed in the most rich and various imagery, and aided by the most picturesque and

pathetic description, speaks the opulence and the powers of that mind, of which age has neither dimmed the discernment, nor enfeebled the fancy; neither repressed the ardour, nor narrowed the range." After a few strongly worded, but rather vague generalities, Mr Mackintosh proceeds with a generally just and elegant description of the style and manner of the work. "The arrangement of his work is as singular as the matter. Availing himself of all the privileges of epistolary diffusion, in their utmost latitude and laxity, he interrupts, dismisses, and resumes argument at pleasure. His subject is as extensive as political science; his allusions and excursions reach to almost every region of human knowledge. It must be confessed that, in this miscellaneous and desultory warfare, the superiority of a man of genius over common men is infinite. He can cover the most ignominious retreat by a brilliant allusion. He can parade his arguments with a masterly generalship when they are strong. He can escape from an untenable position into a splendid declamation. He can sap the most impregnable conviction by pathos, and put to flight a host of syllogisms with a sneer. Absolved from the laws of vulgar method, he can advance a group of magnificent horrors to make a breach in our hearts, through which the most undisciplined rabble of arguments may enter in triumph."*

This eloquent, and highly rhetorical passage, while it may be accepted as descriptive of Mr Burke's method, style, and powers, has, beyond this, little truth, and is remarkable for exemplifying in itself some of the artifice it imputes. Of the whole reply of Mr Mackintosh, we should say, that it is liable to far graver charges, were it not that, in no long time after, its author became a convert to Mr Burke, in common with all the more sober portion of his opponents; and, for this reason, it would be unfair to enter into any analysis of the defence. A few words may sufficiently characterize the general error on which this reply, with most of the other writings on the same side, mainly rested. It was that of stripping a vast and complicated question of all its actual conditions, either in fact or principle. The lesser of these two absurdities was that of Mackintosh, who reasons like a lawyer on an assumed state of facts; and thus produces an argument, in itself full of acute observation and correct reasoning; but not comprehending the whole question, and not meeting the arguments to which he aimed to reply. Such an argument received, and that quickly, a substantial refutation from events. The other opponents of Mr Burke mostly took their stand upon those essentially false views of man, and of the social state, which were among the springs of the revolution itself; and from which, however originated, it received its direction, and was governed to its event.

Mr Burke's work produced an effect such as no other political essay ever had, whether for extent or permanent importance. It arrested the violent progress of revolutionary working in England; it at once deprived the clubs of all their more informed and reputable supporters; and paralyzed the more active and dangerous section of the whigs. It was, under Providence, the first and most decisive check to the dis

* Defence of the French Revolution, Intro., p. iii, ed. 1791.

organizing influence which was rapidly pervading Europe; and thus, with the aid of subsequent incidents (of which Mr Burke's own subsequent writings were the better part), preserved alive the vital spark of social organization, when it was crushed under the ruins of every other state. The rapid confirmation of his forebodings, and the thorough illustration of his views-so soon afforded by the downfal of religion, civil order, and of liberty itself-gave a solemn and impressive stamp; and an essay, which its antagonist described as comprehending the whole range of political science, was shown to offer the justest views of that science.

On the life of the author himself it had memorable effects. Mr Fox could not help feeling that a resistance so strenuous and effective, emanating from one who had held so prominent a position among the whigs, was dangerous to his own views. All experience had proved Mr Burke to be capable, when roused into effort, of acting with overwhelming zeal against all opposition. This the whole history of his life had made manifest. It was hardly possible that Mr Fox should fail to perceive the schism which was thus sure to be made in his party. But there was at the moment a nearer danger to be apprehended. Mr Fox was, at the same time, under an impression that circumstances had taken place which were favourable to his hopes of office; and he considered it injurious to such an expectation, to be placed in the strong light which the speeches, and, above all, the letters of Mr Burke, had cast, and were casting, upon the conduct and principles of his party. At a moment when it was his obvious policy to maintain a character of moderation and constitutional feeling, all the principles which he had avowed were rendered doubtful; his declarations in praise of the revolution were exposed to a dangerous and obvious interpretation; and he was forced to choose between denying himself, or maintaining opinions which could not well bear the sifting of parliamentary discussion. Mr Fox was strongly alive to those sentiments of friendship and personal respect, which were in him the result of a sanguine temperament, and a cultivated taste. He loved and revered Mr Burke, whose genius and virtues he could well appreciate. But, in the path of ambition, and in the heat of party, such sentiments have no power: they are as flowers cast upon a stream, which may ornament, but cannot stay its course.

In imputing motives and a premeditated conduct to Mr Fox, we would be understood to admit that he does not appear to have been actuated by any low or ungenerous motive; or to have wished to wound the feelings, or even to lower the character, of Mr Burke. Justice demands that we should absolve him from every shade of jealousy, or of any personal ill-will or unkindness. We believe that he sincerely and deeply regretted the pain he thought it necessary to give. And we also think it just to admit, that, although we mainly attribute his whole conduct to ambition and the overwhelming love of popularity, he was himself the dupe of his own false creed in politics. Any one who attentively meditates over his most able speeches, will find room enough for such an admission. The most specious and commanding sophist of modern times could not have been what he pre-eminently was, without much of the rhetorical gift of self-conviction. We can easily give Mr