If and his defects, is a love of singularity. Almost all the modern historians of He has no notion of going with a mul- Greece have shown the grossest ignotitude to do either good or evil. An rance of the most obvious phenomena exploded opinion, or an unpopular of human nature. In their represenperson, has an irresistible charm for him. The same perverseness may be traced in his diction. His style would never have been elegant; but it might at least have been manly and perspicuous; and nothing but the most elaborate care could possibly have made it so bad as it is. It is distinguished by harsh phrases, strange collocations, occasional solecisms, frequent obscurity, and, above all, by a peculiar oddity, which can no more be described than it can be overlooked. Nor is this all. Mr. Mitford piques himself on spelling better than any of his neighbours; and this not only in ancient names, which he mangles in defiance both of custom and of reason, but in the most ordinary words of the English language. It is, in itself, a matter perfectly indifferent whether we call a foreigner by the name which he bears in his own language, or by that which corresponds to it in ours; whether we say Lorenzo de Medici, or Lawrence de Medici, Jean Chauvin, or John Calvin. In such cases established usage is considered as law by all writers except Mr. Mitford. If he were always consistent with himself, he might be excused for sometimes disagreeing with his neighbours; but he proceeds on no principle but that of being unlike the rest of the world. Every child has heard of Linnæus; therefore Mr. Mitford calls him Linné: Rousseau is known all over Europe as Jean Jacques; therefore Mr. Mitford bestows on him the strange appellation of John James. Had Mr. Mitford undertaken a history of any other country than Greece, this propensity would have rendered his work useless and absurd. His occasional remarks on the affairs of ancient Rome and of modern Europe are full of errors: but he writes of times with respect to which almost every other writer has been in the wrong; and, therefore, by resolutely deviating from his predecessors, he is often in the right. tations the generals and statesmen of Her In history this error is far more disgraceful. Indeed, there is no fault which so completely ruins a narrative in the opinion of a judicious reader. We know that the line of demarcation between good and bad men is so faintly marked as often to elude the most careful investigation of those and patriotism, from the same cause who have the best opportunities for which leads monks to talk more judging. Public men, above all, are ardently than other men about love surrounded with so many temptations and women. A wise man values and difficulties that some doubt must political liberty, because it secures the almost always hang over their real persons and the possessions of citizens; dispositions and intentions. The lives because it tends to prevent the extraof Pym, Cromwell, Monk, Clarendon, vagance of rulers, and the corruption of Marlborough, Burnet, Walpole, are judges; because it gives birth to useful well known to us. We are acquainted sciences and elegant arts; because it with their actions, their speeches, their excites the industry and increases the writings; we have abundance of letters comforts of all classes of society. and well-authenticated anecdotes re- These theorists imagined that it poslating to them: yet what candid man sessed something eternally and intrinwill venture very positively to say sically good, distinct from the blessings which of them were honest and which which it generally produced. They of them were dishonest men? It ap- considered it not as a means but as an pears easier to pronounce decidedly end; an end to be attained at any cost.. upon the great characters of antiquity, Their favourite heroes are those who not because we have greater means of have sacrificed, for the mere name of discovering truth, but simply because freedom, the prosperity-the securitywe have less means of detecting error. the justice-from which freedom deThe modern historians of Greece have rives its value. forgotten this. Their heroes and villains are as consistent in all their sayings and doings as the cardinal virtues and the deadly sins in an allegory. We should as soon expect a good action from giant Slay-good in Bunyan as from Dionysius; and a crime of Epaminondas would seem as incongruous as a faux-pas of the grave and comely damsel called Discretion, who answered the bell at the door of the house Beautiful. This error was partly the cause and partly the effect of the high estimation in which the later ancient writers have been held by modern scholars. Those French and English authors who have treated of the affairs of Greece have generally turned with contempt from the simple and natural narrations of Thucydides and Xenophon to the extravagant representations of Plutarch, Diodorus, Curtius, and other romancers of the same class,men who described military operations without ever having handled a sword, and applied to the seditions of little republics speculations formed by observation on an empire which covered half the known world. Of liberty they knew nothing. It was to them a great mystery-a superhuman enjoyment. They ranted about liberty There is another remarkable characteristic of these writers, in which their modern worshippers have carefully imitated them-a great fondness for good stories. The most established facts, dates, and characters are never suffered to come into competition with a splendid saying, or a romantic exploit. The early historians have left us natural and simple descriptions of the great events which they witnessed, and the great men with whom they associated. When we read the account which Plutarch and Rollin have given of the same period, we scarcely know our old acquaintance again; we are utterly confounded by the melo-dramatic effect of the narration, and the sublime coxcombry of the characters. These are the principal errors into which the predecessors of Mr. Mitford have fallen; and from most of these he is free. His faults are of a completely different description. It is to be hoped that the students of history may now be saved, like Dorax in Dryden's play, by swallowing two conflicting poisons, each of which may serve as an antidote to the other. The first and most important difference between Mr. Mitford and those who have preceded him is in his narration. Here the advantage lies, for the most : part, on his side. His principle is to The errors of both parties arise from follow the contemporary historians, to an ignorance or a neglect of the fundalook with doubt on all statements mental principles of political science. which are not in some degree confirmed The writers on one side imagine popular by them, and absolutely to reject all government to be always a blessing; which are contradicted by them. While Mr. Mitford omits no opportunity of he retains the guidance of some writer assuring us that it is always a curse. in whom he can place confidence, he The fact is, that a good government, goes on excellently. When he loses it, like a good coat, is that which fits the he falls to the level, or perhaps below body for which it is designed. A man the level, of the writers whom he so who, upon abstract principles, promuch despises he is as absurd as they, nounces a constitution to be good, and very much duller. It is really without an exact knowledge of the amusing to observe how he proceeds people who are to be governed by it, with his narration when he has no judges as absurdly as a tailor who better authority than poor Diodorus. should measure the Belvidere Apollo He is compelled to relate something; yet he believes nothing. He accompanies every fact with a long statement of objections. His account of the administration of Dionysius is in no sense a history. It ought to be entitled "Historic doubts as to certain events, alleged to have taken place in Sicily." This scepticism, however, like that of some great legal characters almost as sceptical as himself, vanishes whenever his political partialities interfere. He is a vehement admirer of tyranny and oligarchy, and considers no evidence as feeble which can be brought forward in favour of those forms of government. Democracy he hates with a perfect hatred, a hatred which, in the first volume of his history, appears only in his episodes and reflections, but which, in those parts where he has less reverence for his guides, and can venture to take his own way, completely distorts even his narration. In taking up these opinions, I have no doubt that Mr. Mitford was influenced by the same love of singularity which led him to spell island without an s, and to place two dots over the last letter of idea. In truth, preceding historians have erred so monstrously on the other side that even the worst parts of Mr. Mitford's book may be useful as a corrective. For a young gentleman who talks much about his country, tyrannicide, and Epaminondas, this work, diluted in a sufficient quantity of Rollin and Barthelemi, may be a very useful remedy. for the clothes of all his customers. The demagogues who wished to see Portugal a republic, and the wise critics who revile the Virginians for not having instituted a peerage, appear equally ridiculous to all men of sense and candour. That is the best government which desires to make the people happy, and knows how to make them happy. Neither the inclination nor the knowledge will suffice alone; and it is difficult to find them together. The Pure democracy, and pure democracy alone, satisfies the former condition of this great problem. That the governors may be solicitous only for the interests of the governed, it is necessary that the interests of the governors and the governed should be the same. This cannot be often the case where power is intrusted to one or to a few. privileged part of the community will doubtless derive a certain degree of advantage from the general prosperity of the state; but they will derive a greater from oppression and exaction. The king will desire an useless war for his glory, or a parc-aux-cerfs for his pleasure. The nobles will demand monopolies and lettres-de-câchet. In proportion as the number of governors is increased the evil is diminished. There are fewer to contribute, and more to receive. The dividend which each can obtain of the public plunder becomes less and less tempting. But the interests of the subjects and the rulers never absolutely coincide till the subjects themselves become the rulers, that is, till the government be either immediately or mediately democratical. But this is not enough. "Will without power," said the sagacious Casimir to Milor Beefington, "is like children playing at soldiers." The people will always be desirous to promote their own interests; but it may be doubted, whether, in any community, they were ever sufficiently educated to understand them. Even in this island, where the multitude have long been better informed than in any other part of Europe, the rights of the many have generally been asserted against themselves by the patriotism of the few. Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular. It may be well doubted, whether a liberal policy with regard to our commercial relations would find any support from a parliament elected by universal suffrage. The republicans on the other side of the Atlantic have recently adopted regulations of which the consequences will, before long, show us, "How nations sink, by darling schemes oppressed, When vengeance listens to the fool's re quest. The people are to be governed for their own good; and, that they may be governed for their own good, they must not be governed by their own ignorance. There are countries in which it would be as absurd to establish popular government as to abolish all the restraints in a school, or to untie all the strait-waistcoats in a madhouse. Hence it may be concluded that the happiest state of society is that in which supreme power resides in the whole body of a well-informed people. This is an imaginary, perhaps an unattainable, state of things. Yet, in some measure, we may approximate to it; and he alone deserves the name of a great statesman, whose principle it is to extend the power of the people in proportion to the extent of their knowledge, and to give them every facility for obtaining such a degree of knowledge as may render it safe to trust them with absolute power. In the mean time, it is dangerous to praise or condemn constitutions in the abstract; since, from the despotism of St. Petersburg to the democracy of Washington, there is scarcely a form of government which might not, at least in some hypothetical case, be the best possible. If, however, there be any form of government which in all ages and all nations has always been, and must always be, pernicious, it is certainly that which Mr. Mitford, on his usual principle of being wiser than all the rest of the world, has taken under his especial patronage pure oligarchy. This is closely, and indeed inseparably, connected with another of his eccentric tastes, a marked partiality for Lacedæmon, and a dislike of Athens. Mr. Mitford's book has, I suspect, rendered these sentiments in some degree popular; and I shall, therefore, examine them at some length. The shades in the Athenian character strike the eye more rapidly than those in the Lacedæmonian: not because they are darker, but because they are on a brighter ground. The law of ostracism is an instance of this. Nothing can be conceived more odious than the practice of punishing a citizen, simply and professedly, for his eminence;--and nothing in the institutions of Athens is more frequently or more justly censured. Lacedæmon was free from this. And why? Lacedæmon did not need it. Oligarchy is an ostracism of itself,-an ostracism not occasional, but permanent,-not dubious, but certain. Her laws prevented the development of merit, instead of attacking its maturity. They did not cut down the plant in its high and palmy state, but cursed the soil with eternal sterility. In spite of the law of ostracism, Athens produced, within a hundred and fifty years, the greatest public men that ever existed. Whom had Sparta to ostracise? She produced, at most, four eminent men, Brasidas, Gylippus, Lysander, and Agesilaus. Of these, not one rose to distinction within her jurisdiction. It was only when they escaped from the region within which the influence of aristocracy withered everything good thus, without ever enjoying a day of health or pleasure, drags on its existence to a doting and debilitated old age. The Spartans purchased for their government a prolongation of its existence by the sacrifice of happiness and noble, it was only when they ceased to be Lacedæmonians, that they becime great men. Brasidas, among the cities of Thrace, was strictly a democratical leader, the favourite minister and general of the people. The same may be said of Gylippus, at home and dignity abroad. They at Syracuse. Lysander, in the Hel- cringed to the powerful; they tramlespont, and Agesilaus, in Asia, were pled on the weak; they massacred liberated for a time from the hateful their helots; they betrayed their alrestraints imposed by the constitution lies; they contrived to be a day too of Lycurgus. Both acquired fame late for the battle of Marathon; they abroad; and both returned to be attempted to avoid the battle of Sawatched and depressed at home. This lamis; they suffered the Athenians, is not peculiar to Sparta. Oligarchy, to whom they owed their lives and wherever it has existed, has always liberties, to be a second time driven stunted the growth of genius. Thus from their country by the Persians, it was at Rome, till about a century that they might finish their own fortibefore the Christian era: we read of fications on the Isthmus; they atabundance of consuls and dictators who tempted to take advantage of the diswon battles, and enjoyed triumphs; tress to which exertions in their cause but we look in vain for a single man had reduced their preservers, in order of the first order of intellect, for a to make them their slaves; they strove Pericles, a Demosthenes, or a Hannibal. to prevent those who had abandoned The Gracchi formed a strong demo- their walls to defend them, from recratical party; Marius revived it; the building them to defend themselves; foundations of the old aristocracy they commenced the Peloponnesian were shaken; and two generations fer- war in violation of their engagements tile in really great men appeared. with Athens; they abandoned it in Venice is a still more remarkable in-violation of their engagements with stance in her history we see nothing but the state; aristocracy had destroyed every seed of genius and virtue. Her dominion was like herself, lofty and magnificent, but founded on filth and weeds. God forbid that there should ever again exist a powerful and civilised state, which, after existing through thirteen hundred eventful years, shall not bequeath to mankind the memory of one great name or one generous action. Many writers, and Mr. Mitford among the number, have admired the stability of the Spartan institutions; in fact, there is little to admire, and less to approve. Oligarchy is the weakest and the most stable of governments; and it is stable because it is weak. It has a sort of valetudinarian longevity; it lives in the balance of Sanctorius; it takes no exercise; it exposes itself to no accident; it is seized with an hypochondriac alarm at every new sensation; it trembles at every breath; it lets blood for every inflammation: and their allies; they gave up to the sword whole cities which had placed themselves under their protection; they bartered, for advantages confined to themselves, the interest, the freedom, and the lives of those who had served them most faithfully; they took with equal complacency, and equal infamy, the stripes of Elis and the bribes of Persia; they never showed either resentment or gratitude; they abstained from no injury; and they revenged nones. Above all, they looked on a citizen who served them well as their deadliest enemy. These are the arts which protract the existence of government. Nor were the domestic institutions of Lacedæmon less hateful or less contemptible than her foreign policy. A perpetual interference with every part of the system of human life, a constant struggle against nature and reason, characterised all her laws. violate even prejudices which have taken deep root in the minds of a people is scarcely expedient; to think To |