ed by prejudice, passion, or bigotry. But the the course adopted by Sir William Temple, by abandoned judges of our own country com- Evelyn, and by many other men, who were, mitted murder with their eyes open. The in every respect, admirably qualified to serve cause of this is plain. In France there was the state. no constitutional opposition. If a man held language offensive to the government, he was at once sent to the Bastile or to Vincennes. But in England, at least after the days of the Long Parliament, the king could not, by a mere act of his prerogative, rid himself of a troublesome politician. He was forced to remove those who thwarted him by means of perjured witnesses, packed juries, and corrupt, hardhearted, brow-beating judges. The Opposition naturally retaliated whenever they had the upper hand. Every time that the power passed from one party to the other, took place a proscription and a massacre, thinly disguised under the forms of judicial procedure. The tribunals ought to be sacred places of refuge, where, in all the vicissitudes of public affairs, the innocent of all parties may find shelter. They were, before the Revolution, an unclean | public shambles, to which each party in its turn dragged its opponents, and where each found the same venal and ferocious butchers waiting for its custom. Papist or Protestant, Tory or Whig, Priest or Alderman, all was one to those greedy and savage natures, provided only there was money to earn and blood

to shed.

On the other hand, those resolute and enterprising spirits who put their heads and lands to hazard in the game of politics, naturally acquired, from the habit of playing for so deep a stake, a reckless and desperate turn of mind. It was, we seriously believe, as safe to be a highwayman as to be a distinguished leader of Opposition. This may serve to explain, and in some degree to excuse, the violence with which the factions of that age are justly reproached. They were fighting, not for office, but for life. If they reposed for a moment from the work of agitation, if they suffered the public excitement to flag, they were lost men. Hume, in describing this state of things, has employed an image which seems hardly to suit the general simplicity of his style, but which is by no means too strong for the occasion. "Thus,” says he, “the two par ties, actuated by mutual rage, but cooped up within the narrow limits of the law, levelled with poisoned daggers the most deadly blows against each other's breast, and buried in their factious divisions all regard to truth, honour, and humanity."

From this terrible evil the Revolution set us free. The law which secured to the judges their seats during life or good behaviour did Of course, these worthless judges soon something. The law subsequently passed for created around them, as was natural, a breed regulating trials in cases of treason did much of informers more wicked, if possible, than more. The provisions of that law show, inthemselves. The trial by jury afforded little deed, very little legislative skill. It is not or no protection to the innocent. The juries framed on the principle of securing the innowere nominated by the sheriffs. The sheriffs cent, but on the principle of giving a great were in most parts of England nominated by chance of escape to the accused, whether inthe crown. In London, the great scene of nocent or guilty. This, however, is decidedly political contention, those officers were chosen a fault on the right side. The evil produced by the people. The fiercest parliamentary by the occasional escape of a bad citizen is election of our time will give but a faint notion not to be compared with the evils of that Reign of the storm which raged in the city on the day of Terror, for such it was, which preceded the when two infuriated parties, each bearing its Revolution. Since the passing of this law, badge, met to select the men in whose hands scarcely one single person has suffered death were to be the issues of life and death for the in England as a traitor, who had not been concoming year. On that day nobles of the high-victed on overwhelming evidence, to the satisest descent did not think it beneath them to canvass and marshal the livery, to head the procession, and to watch the poll. On that day, the great chiefs of parties waited in an agony of suspense for the messenger who was to bring from Guildhall the news whether their lives and estates were, for the next twelve months, to be at the mercy of a friend or of a foe. In 1681, Whig sheriffs were chosen, and Shaftesbury defied the whole power of the government. In 1682, the sheriffs were Tories, Shaftesbury fled to Holland. The other chiefs of the party broke up their councils, and retired in haste to their country-seats. Sydney on the scaffold told those sheriffs that his blood was on their heads. Neither of them could deny the charge, and one of them wept with shame and remorse.

Thus every man who then meddled with public affairs took his life in his hand. The consequence was, that men of gentle natures stood aloof from contests in which they could ot engage without hazarding their own necks and the fortunes of their children. This was

faction of all parties, of a really great crime against the state. Attempts have been made in times of great excitement, to bring in persons guilty of high treason for acts which, though sometimes highly blamable, did not necessarily imply a design of altering the government by physical force. All those attempts have failed. For a hundred and forty years, no statesman, while engaged in constitutional opposition to a government, has had the are before his eyes. The smallest minorities struggling against the most powerful majorities in the most agitated times, have felt themselves perfectly secure. Pulteney and Fox were the two most distinguished leaders of Opposition since the Revolution. Both were personally obnoxious to the court. But the utmost harm that the utmost anger of the court could do to them, was to strike off the "Right Honourable" from before their names.

But of all the reforms produced by the Revolution, the most important was the full esta blishment of the liberty of unlicensed printing. The censorship, which, under some form or

other had existed, with rare and short intermis- which has generally been most disposed to sions, under every government, monarchical magnify the prerogative, a great change took or republican, from the time of Henry VIII. place. Bishopric after bishopric, and deanery downwards, expired, and has never since been after deanery, were bestowed on Whigs and renewed. Latitudinarians. The consequence was, that Whigism and Latitudinarianism were professed by the ablest and most aspiring churchmen.

We are aware that the great improvements which we have recapitulated were, in many respects, imperfectly and unskilfully executed. The authors of those improvements sometimes, Hume has complained bitterly of this at the while they removed or mitigated a great prac- close of his history. "The Whig party," says tical evil, continued to recognise the erroneous he, "for a course of near seventy years, has principle from which that evil had sprung. almost without interruption enjoyed the whole Sometimes, when they had adopted a sound authority of government, and no honours or principle, they shrank from following it to all offices could be obtained but by their countethe conclusions to which it would have led nance and protection. But this event, which in them. Sometimes they failed to perceive that some particulars has been advantageous to the the remedies which they applied to one disease state,.has proved destructive to the truth of of the state were certain to generate another history, and has established many gross falsedisease, and to render another remedy neces- hoods, which it is unaccountable how any sary. Their knowledge was inferior to ours; civilized nation could have embraced with renor were they always able to act up to their gard to its domestic occurrences. Composiknowledge. The pressure of circumstances, tions the most despicable, both for style and the necessity of compromising differences of matter" (in a note he instances Locke, Sydney, opinion, the power and violence of the party Hoadley, and Rapin) "have been extolled and 7 which was altogether hostile to the new settle-propagated and read as if they had equalled the ment, must be taken into the account. When most celebrated remains of antiquity. And these things are fairly weighed, there will, we think, be little difference of opinion among liberal and right-minded men as to the real value of what the great events of 1688 did for this country.

forgetting that a regard to liberty, though a laudable passion, ought commonly to be subservient to a reverence for established government, the prevailing faction has celebrated only the partisans of the former." We will not here enter into an argument about the merit of Rapin's history, or Locke's political speculations. We call Hume merely as evidence to a fact well known to all reading men, that the literature patronised by the English court and the English ministry, during the first half of the eighteenth century, was of that kind which courtiers and ministers generally do all in their power to discountenance, and tended to inspire zeal for the liberties of the people rather than respect for the authority of the government.

We have recounted what appear to us the most important of those changes which the Revolution produced in our laws. The changes which it produced in our laws, however, were not more important than the change which it indirectly produced in the public mind. The Whig party had, during seventy years, an almost uninterrupted possession of power. It had always been the fundamental doctrine of that party, that power is a trust for the people; that it is given to magistrates, not for their own, but for the public advantage; that, where it is abused by magistrates, even by the highest There was still a very strong Tory party in of all, it may lawfully be withdrawn. It is England. But that party was in opposition. perfectly true, that the Whigs were not more Many of its members still held the doctrine of exempt than other men from the vices and in- passive obedience. But they did not admit firmities of our nature, and that, when they had that the existing dynasty had any claim to such power, they sometimes abused it. But still obedience. They condemned resistance. But they stood firm to their theory. The theory by resistance they meant the keeping out of was the badge of their party. It was some- James III., and not the turning out of George II. thing more. It was the foundation on which No Radical of our times could grumble more rested the power of the houses of Nassau and at the expenses of the royal household, could Brunswick. Thus, there was a government exert himself more strenuously to reduce the interested in propagating a class of opinions military establishment, could oppose with more which most governments are interested in dis-earnestness every proposition for arming the couraging, a government which looked with complacency on all speculations tending to democracy, and with extreme aversion on all speculations favourable to arbitrary power. There was a king who decidedly preferred a republican to a believer in the divine right of kings; who considered every attempt to exalt his prerogative as an attack on his title; and who reserved all his favours for those who declaimed on the natural equality of men and the popular origin of government. This was the state of things from the Revolution till the death of George II. The effect was what might have been expected. Even in that profession we should set him down for something more

VOL. III.-40

executive with extraordinary powers, or could
pour more unmitigated abuse on placemen and
courtiers. If a writer were now, in a massive
Dictionary, to define a Pensioner as a traitor
and a slave, the Excise as a hateful tax, the
Commissioners of the excise as wretches,-if
he were to write a satire full of reflections on
men who receive "the price of boroughs and
of souls," who "explain their country's dear-
bought rights away," or

"whom pensions can incite
To vote a patriot black, a courtier white,"

2 D

SIR JOHN MALCOLM'S LIFE OF LORD CLIVE.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW FOR JANUARY, 1840.]

guage, has never been very popular, and is now scarcely ever read.

with severity a work which, if the author had lived to complete and revise it, would probably have been improved by condensation and by a better arrangement. We are more disposed to perform the pleasing duty of expressing our gratitude to the noble family to which the public owes so much useful and curious information.

We have always thought it strange that, while the history of the Spanish empire in the America is so familiarly known to all the na- We fear that Sir John Malcolm's volumes hea tions of Europe, the great actions of our own will not much attract those readers whom, Countrymen in the East should, even among Orme and Mill have repelled. The materials ourselves, excite little interest. Every school-placed at his disposal by the late Lord Powis boy knows who imprisoned Montezuma, and were indeed of great value. But we cannot who strangled Atabalipa. But we doubt whe- say that they have been very skilfully worked ther one in ten, even among English gentlemen | up. It would, however, be unjust to criticise of highly cultivated minds, can tell who won the battle of Buxar, who perpetrated the massacre of Patna, whether Surajah Dowlah ruled in Oude or in Travancore, or whether Holkar was a Hindoo or a Mussulman. Yet the victories of Cortes were gained over savages who had no letters, who were ignorant of the use of metals, who had not broken in a single animal to labour, who wielded no better weapons than those which could be made out of sticks, fints, and fish-bones, who regarded a horsesoldier as a monster, half man and half beast, who took a harquebusier for a sorcerer able to scatter the thunder and lightning of the skies. The people of India when we subdued them were ten times as numerous as the vanquished Americans, and were at the same time quite as highly civilized as the victorious Spaniards. They had reared cities larger and fairer than Saragossa or Toledo, and buildings more beautiful and costly than the cathedral of Seville. They could show bankers richer than the richest firms of Barcelona or Cadiz; viceroys whose splendour far surpassed that of Ferdinand the Catholic; myriads of cavalry and long trains of artillery which would have astonished the Great Captain. It might have been expected that every Englishman who takes any interest in any part of history would be curious to know how a handful of his countrymen, separated from their home by an immense ocean, subjugated, in the course of a few years, one of the greatest empires in the world. Yet, unless we greatly err, this subject is to most readers not only insipid, but positively distasteful.

Perhaps the fault lies partly with the historians. Mr. Mill's book, though it has undoubtedly great and rare merit, is not sufficiently animated and picturesque to attract those who read for amusement. Orme, inferior to no English historian in style and power of painting, is minute even to tediousness. In one volume he allots, on an average, a closely printed quarto page to the events of every forty-eight hours. The consequence is that his narrative, though one of the most authentic and one of the most finely written in our lan

* The_Life of Robert Lord Clive; collected from the Family Papers, communicated by the Earl of Powis. By Major-General Sir JOHN MALCOLM, K. C.B. 3 vols. 8vo. Leadon. 1836.

The effect of the book, even when we make the largest allowance for the partiality of those who have furnished and of those who have digested the materials, is, on the whole, greatly to raise the character of Lord Clive. We are far indeed from sympathizing with Sir John Malcolm, whose love passes the love of biographers, and who can see nothing but wisdom and justice in the actions of his idol. But we are at least equally far from concurring in the severe judgment of Mr. Mill, who seems to us to show less discrimination in his account of Clive than in any other part of his valuable work. Clive, like most men who are born with strong passions, and tried by strong temptations, committed great faults. But every person who takes a fair and enlightened view of his whole career must admit that our island, so fertile in heroes and statesmen, has scarcely ever produced a man more truly great either in arms or in council.

The Clives had been settled ever since the twelfth century on an estate of no great value near Market-Drayton, in Shropshire. In the reign of George the First this moderate but ancient inheritance was possessed by Mr. Richard Clive, who seems to have been a plain man of no great tact or capacity. He had been bred to the law, and divided his time between professional business and the avocations of a small proprietor. He married a lady from Manchester of the name of Gaskill, and became the father of a very numerous family. His eldest son, Robert, the founder of the British empire in India, was born at the old seat of his ancestors on the 29th of September, 1725.

Some lineaments of the character of the man were early discerned in the child. There re main letters written by his relations when he I was in his seventh year; and from these it appears that, even at that early age, his strong will and his fiery passions, sustained by a constitutional intrepidity which sometimes seemed

the desk and the warehouse, to enjoy the t breeze which springs up at sunset from t Bay of Bengal. The habits of these mere tile grandees appear to have been more p fuse, luxurious, and ostentatious, than the of the high judicial and political functiona who have succeeded them. But comfort far less understood. Many devices which mitigate the heat of the climate, prese health, and prolong life, were unkno There was far less intercourse with E than at present. The voyage by the Ca which in our time has often been perfor within three months, was then very se accomplished in six, and was, sometimes tracted to more than a year. Consequent Anglo-Indian was then much more estr from his country, much more an orienta his tastes and habits, and much less fitted mix in society after his return to Europe, the Anglo-Indian of the present day.

hardly compatible with soundness of mind, haded by its garden, whither the wealthy age begun to cause great uneasiness to his family. of the Company retired, after the labours "Fighting," says one of his uncles, "to which he is out of measure addicted, gives his temper such a fierceness and imperiousness that he flies out on every trifling occasion." The old people of the neighbourhood still remember to have heard from their parents how Bob Clive climbed to the top of the lofty steeple of Market-Drayton, and with what terror the inhabitants saw him seated on a stone spout near the summit. They also relate how he formed all the good-for-nothing lads of the town into a kind of predatory army, and compelled the shopkeepers to submit to a tribute of apples and halfpence, in consideration of which he guarantied the security of their windows. He was sent from school to school, making very little progress in his learning, and gaining for himself everywhere the character of an exceedingly naughty boy. One of his masters, it is said, was sagacious enough to prophesy that the idle lad would make a great figure in the world. But the general opinion seems to have been that poor Robert was a dunce, if not a reprobate. His family expected nothing good from such slender parts and such a headstrong temper. It is not strange, therefore, that they gladly accepted for him, when he was in his eighteenth year, a writership in the service of the East India Company, and shipped him off to make a fortune or to die of a fever at Madras.

Far different were the prospects of Clive from those of the youths whom the East India College now annually sends to the Presidencies of our Asiatic empire. The Company was then purely a trading corporation. Its territory consisted of a few square miles, for which rent was paid to the native governments. Its troops were scarcely numerous enough to man the batteries of three or four ill-constructed forts, which had been erected for the protection of the warehouses. The natives, who composed a considerable part of these little garrisons had not yet been trained in the discipline of Europe, and were armed, some with - swords and shields, some with bows and arTOWS. The business of the servants of the Company was not, as now, to conduct the judicial, financial, and diplomatic business of a great country, but to take stock, to make advances to weavers, to ship cargoes, and to keep a sharp look-out for private traders who dared to infringe the monopoly. The younger clerks were so miserably paid that they could scarcely subsist without incurring debt; the elder enriched themselves by trading on their own account; and those who lived to rise to the top of the service, often accumulated considerable fortunes.

Within the fort and its precincts, the E governors exercised, by permission of the tive rulers, an extensive authority. Bu had never dreamed of claiming indepen power. The surrounding country was verned by the Nabob of the Carnatic, a de of the Viceroy of the Deccan, commonly the Nizam, who was himself only a depu the mighty prince designated by our ances as the Great Mogul. Those names, o august and formidable, still remain. The still a Nabob of the Carnatic, who lives pension allowed to him by the Company of the revenues of the province which his cestors ruled. There is still a Nizam, capital is overawed by a British canton and to whom a British resident gives, the name of advice, cómmands which are to be disputed. There is still a Mogul, w permitted to play at holding courts and re ing petitions, but who has less power to or hurt than the youngest civil servant Company.

Clive's voyage was unusually tedious for that age. The ship remained some mo at the Brazils, where the young advent picked up some knowledge of Portuguese, spent all his pocket-money. He did not a in India till more than a year after he had England. His situation at Madras was painful. His funds were exhausted. His was small. He had contracted debts. He wretchedly lodged-no small calamity in a mate which can be rendered tolerable European only by spacious, and well-pa apartments. He had been furnished with ters of recommendation to a gentleman might have assisted him; but when he lande Madras, to which Clive had been appointed, at Fort St. George he found that this gentlema was, at this time, perhaps, the first in import- had sailed for England. His shy and haugh ance of the Company's settlements. In the disposition withheld him from introducing h preceding century, Fort St. George had arisen self. He was several months in India bef on a barren spot, beaten by a raging surf; and he became acquainted with a single fam in the neighbourhood of a town, inhabited by The climate affected his health and spiri towns spring up in the East, with the rapidity dent and daring character. He pined for his many thousands of natives, had sprung up, as His duties were of a kind ill suited to his a of the prophet's gourd. There were already in home, and in his letters to his relations et the suburbs many white villas, each surround-pressed his feelings in "nguage softer and