civil government required; and of those | of the bad acts which brought discredit millions he would have been as abso- on the old parliaments of France, the lutely master as the King now is of the condemnation of Lally, for example, or sum allotted for his privy-purse. He even that of Calas, may seem praisemight have spent them in luxury, in worthy when compared with the atrocorruption, in paying troops to overawe cities which follow each other in endless his people, or in carrying into effect succession as we turn over that huge wild schemes of foreign conquest. The chronicle of the shame of England. authors of the Revolution applied a The magistrates of Paris and Toulouse remedy to this great abuse. They were blinded by prejudice, passion, or settled on the King, not the fluctuating bigotry. But the abandoned judges of produce of certain fixed taxes, but a our own country committed murder fixed sum sufficient for the support of with their eyes open. The cause of his own royal state. They established this is plain. In France there was no it as a rule that all the expenses of the constitutional opposition. If a man army, the navy, and the ordnance held language offensive to the governshould be brought annually under the ment, he was at once sent to the Bastile review of the House of Commons, and or to Vincennes. But in England, at that every sum voted should be applied least after the days of the Long Parliato the service specified in the vote. ment, the King could not, by a mere The direct effect of this change was act of his prerogative, rid himself of a important. The indirect effect has troublesome politician. He was forced been more important still. From that to remove those who thwarted him by time the House of Commons has been means of perjured witnesses, packed really the paramount power in the state. juries, and corrupt, hard-hearted, browIt has, in truth, appointed and removed beating judges. The Opposition natuministers, declared war, and concluded rally retaliated whenever they had the peace. No combination of the King upper hand. Every time that the and the Lords has ever been able to power passed from one party to the effect any thing against the Lower other, there was a proscription and a House, backed by its constituents. massacre, thinly disguised under the Three or four times, indeed, the sove- forms of judicial procedure. The trireign has been able to break the force bunals ought to be sacred places of of an opposition by dissolving the Par- refuge, where, in all the vicissitudes of liament. But if that experiment should public affairs, the innocent of all parties fail, if the people should be of the same may find shelter. They were, before mind with their representatives, he the Revolution, an unclean public would clearly have no course left but shambles, to which each party in its to yield, to abdicate, or to fight. 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.

The next great blessing which we owe to the Revolution is the purification of the administration of justice in political cases. Of the importance of this change no person can judge who is not well acquainted with the earlier volumes of the State Trials. Those volumes are, we do not hesitate to say, the most frightful record of baseness and depravity that is extant in the world. Our hatred is altogether turned away from the crimes and the criminals, and directed against the law and its ministers. We see villanies as black as ever were imputed to any prisoner at any bar daily committed on the bench and in the jury-box. The worst

Of course, these worthless judges soon created around them, as was natural, a breed of informers more wicked, if possible, than themselves. The trial by jury afforded little or no protection to the innocent. The juries were nominated by the sheriffs. The sheriffs were in most parts of England nominated by the Crown. In London, the great scene of political contention, those officers were chosen by the people.

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.

tuated 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."

The fiercest parliamentary election of our time will give but a faint notion of the storm which raged in the city on the day when two infuriated parties, each bearing its badge, met to select the men in whose hands were to be the issues of life and death for the coming year. On that day, nobles of" Thus," says he, "the two parties acthe highest 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 From this terrible evil the Revoluwere, for the next twelve months, to tion set us free. The law which sebe at the mercy of a friend or of a foe. cured to the judges their seats during In 1681, Whig sheriff's were chosen; life or good behaviour did something. and Shaftesbury defied the whole power The law subsequently passed for reof the government. In 1682 the sheriffs gulating trials in cases of treason did were Tories. Shaftesbury fled to Hol- much more. The provisions of that land. The other chiefs of the party law show, indeed, very little legislative broke up their councils, and retired in skill. It is not framed on the principle haste to their country-seats. Sydney of securing the innocent, but on the on the scaffold told those sheriffs that principle of giving a great chance of his blood was on their heads. Neither escape to the accused, whether innoof them could deny the charge; and cent or guilty. This, however, is deone of them wept with shame and re-cidedly a fault on the right side. The evil produced by the occasional escape

morse.

Thus every man who then meddled of a bad citizen is not to be compared with public affairs took his life in his with the evils of that Reign of Terror, hand. The consequence was that men for such it was, which preceded the of gentle natures stood aloof from con- Revolution. Since the passing of this tests in which they could not engage law scarcely one single person has sufwithout hazarding their own necks and fered death in England as a traitor, the fortunes of their children. This who had not been convicted on overwas the course adopted by Sir William 'whelming evidence, to the satisfaction Temple, by Evelyn, and by many other of all parties, of the highest crime men who were, in every respect, ad- against the State. Attempts have been mirably qualified to serve the State. made in times of great excitement, to On the other hand, those resolute and bring in persons guilty of high treason enterprising men who put their heads for acts which, though sometimes and lands to hazard in the game of highly blamable, did not necessarily politics naturally acquired, from the imply a design falling within the legal habit of playing for so deep a stake, a definition of treason. All those atreckless and desperate turn of mind. tempts have failed. During a hundred It was, we seriously believe, as safe to and forty years no statesman, while be a highwayman as to be a distin- engaged in constitational opposition to guished leader of Opposition. This a government, has had the axe before may serve to explain, and in some de- his eyes. The smallest minorities, gree to excuse, the violence with which struggling against the most powerful the factions of that age are justly majorities, in the most agitated times, reproached. They were fighting, not have felt themselves perfectly secure. merely for office, but for life. If they Pulteney and Fox were the two most reposed for a moment from the work distinguished leaders of Opposition

since the Revolution. Both were per- | years, an almost uninterrupted possessonally obnoxious to the Court. But sion of power. It had always been the the utmost harm that the utmost anger fundamental doctrine of that party, 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, perhaps the most important was the full establishment of the liberty of unlicensed printing. The Censorship which, under some form or other, had existed, with rare and short intermissions, under every government, monarchical or republican, from the time of Henry the Eighth downwards, expired, and has never since been renewed.

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 of all, it may lawfully be withdrawn. It is perfectly true, that the Whigs were not more exempt than other men from the vices and infirmities of our nature, and that, when they had power, they sometimes abused it. But still they stood firm to their theory. That theory was the badge of their party. It was something more. It was the foundation on We are aware that the great im- which rested the power of the houses provements which we have recapitulated of Nassau and Brunswick. Thus, were, in many respects, imperfectly there was a government interested in and unskilfully executed. The authors propagating a class of opinions which of those improvements sometimes, most governments are interested in while they removed or mitigated a discouraging, a government which great practical evil, continued to re-looked with complacency on all specognise the erroneous principle from culations favourable to public liberty, which that evil had sprung. Sometimes, when they had adopted a sound principle, they shrank from following it to all the conclusions to which it would have led them. Sometimes they failed to perceive that the remedies which they applied to one disease of the State were certain to generate another disease, and to render another remedy necessary. Their knowledge was inferior to ours: nor were they always able to act up to their knowledge. The pressure of circumstances, the necessity of compromising differences of opinion, the power and violence of the party which was altogether hostile to the new settlement, must be taken into the account. When 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.

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

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 the Second. The effect was what might have been expected. Even in that profession which has generally been most disposed to magnify the prerogative, a great change took place. Bishopric after bishopric and deanery after deanery were bestowed on Whigs and Latitudinarians. The consequence was that Whiggism and Latitudinarianism were professed by the ablest and most aspiring churchmen.

Hume complained bitterly of this at the close of his history. "The Whig party," says he," for a course of near seventy years, has almost without interruption enjoyed the whole authority of government, and no honours or offices could be obtained but by their countenance and protection. But this

event, which in some particulars has | traitor and a slave, the Excise as a hatebeen advantageous to the state, has ful tax, the Commissioners of the Ex proved destructive to the truth of his- cise as wretches, if he were to write a tory, and has established many gross satire full of reflections on men who falsehoods, which it is unaccountable receive "the price of boroughs and of how any civilised nation could have souls," who "explain their country's embraced, with regard to its domestic dear-bought rights away," or occurrences. Compositions the most despicable, both for style and matter," To vote a patriot black, a courtier white," "whom pensions can incite - in a note he instances the writings of Locke, Sydney, Hoadley, and Rapin, we should set him down for something "have been extolled and propa- more democratic than a Whig. Yet this gated and read as if they had equalled was the language which Johnson, the the most celebrated remains of an- most bigoted of Tories and High tiquity. And forgetting that a regard Churchmen, held under the administrato liberty, though a laudable passion, tion of Walpole and Pelham. ought commonly to be subservient to a Thus doctrines favourable to public reverence for established government, liberty were inculcated alike by those the prevailing faction has celebrated who were in power and by those only the partisans of the former." We who were in opposition. It was by will not here enter into an argument means of these doctrines alone that the about the merit of Rapin's History or former could prove that they had a Locke's political speculations. We King de jure. The servile theories of call Hume merely as evidence to a the latter did not prevent them from fact well known to all reading men, offering every molestation to one whom that the literature patronised by the they considered as merely a King de English Court and the English minis- facto. The attachment of one party to try, during the first half of the eigh- the House of Hanover, of the other to teenth century, was of that kind which that of Stuart, induced both to talk a courtiers and ministers generally do language much more favourable to all in their power to discountenance, popular rights than to monarchical and tended to inspire zeal for the li- power. What took place at the first berties of the people rather than re- representation of Cato is no bad illusspect for the authority of the govern-tration of the way in which the two

ment.

There was still a very strong Tory party in England. But that party was in opposition. Many of its members still held the doctrine of passive obedience. But they did not admit that the existing dynasty had any claim to such obedience. They condemned resistance. But by resistance they meant the keeping out of James the Third, and not the turning out of George the Second. No radical of our times could grumble more at the expenses of the royal household, could exert himself more strenuously to reduce the military establishment, could oppose with more earnestness every proposition for arming the 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

great sections of the community almost invariably acted. A play, the whole merit of which consists in its stately rhetoric sometimes not unworthy of Lucan, about hating tyrants and dying for freedom, is brought on the stage in a time of great political excitement. Both parties crowd to the theatre. Each affects to consider every line as a compliment to itself, and an attack on its opponents. The curtain falls amidst an unanimous roar of applause. The Whigs of the Kit Cat embrace the author, and assure him that he has rendered an inestimable service to liberty. The Tory secretary of state presents a purse to the chief actor for defending the cause of liberty so well. The history of that night was, in miniature, the history of two generations.

We well know how much sophistry there was in the reasonings, and how

LORD BACON. (JULY, 1887.)

The Works of Francis Bacon, Lord Chan cellor of England. A new Edition. By BASIL MONTAGU, Esq. 16 vols. 8vo. London: 1825-1834.

much exaggeration in the declamations of both parties. But when we compare the state in which political science was at the close of the reign of George the Second with the state in which it had been when James the Second came to the throne, it is impossible not to admit WE return our hearty thanks to Mr. that a prodigious improvement had Montagu for this truly valuable work. taken place. We are no admirers of From the opinions which he expresses the political doctrines laid down in as a biographer we often dissent. But Blackstone's Commentaries. But if we about his merit as a collector of the consider that those Commentaries were materials out of which opinions are read with great applause in the very formed, there can be no dispute; and schools where, seventy or eighty years we readily acknowledge that we are in before, books had been publicly burned a great measure indebted to his minute by order of the University of Oxford and accurate researches for the means for containing the damnable doctrine of refuting what we cannot but consider that the English monarchy is linaited as his erorrs. and mixed, we cannot deny that a salutary change had taken place. "The Jesuits," says Pascal, in the last of his incomparable letters,"have obtained a Papal decree, condemning Galileo's doctrine about the motion of the earth. It is all in vain, If the world is really turning round, all mankind together will not be able to keep it from turning, or to keep themselves from turning with it." The decrees of Oxford were as ineffectual to stay the great moral and political revolution as those of the Vatican to stay the motion of our globe. That learned University found itself not only unable to keep the mass from moving, but unable to keep itself from moving along with the mass. Nor was the effect of the discussions and speculations of that period confined to our own country. While the Jacobite party was in the last dotage and weakness of its paralytic old age, the political philosophy of England began to produce a mighty effect on France, and, through France, on Europe.

before us.

The labour which has been bestowed on this volume has been a labour of love. The writer is evidently enamoured of the subject. It fills his heart. It constantly overflows from his lips and his pen. Those who are acquainted with the Courts in which Mr. Montagu practises with so much ability and success well know how often he enlivens the discussion of a point of law by citing some weighty aphorism, or some brilliant illustration, from the De Augmentis or the Novum Organum. The Life before us doubtless owes much of its value to the honest and generous enthusiasm of the writer. This feeling has stimulated his activity, has sustained his perseverance, has called forth all his ingenuity and eloquence: but, on the other hand, we must frankly say that it has, to a great extent, perverted his judgment.

We are by no means without sympathy for Mr. Montagu even in what

we consider as his weakness. There is scarcely any delusion which has a better claim to be indulgently treated than Here another vast field opens itself that under the influence of which a man But we must resolutely ascribes every moral excellence to those turn away from it. We will conclude who have left imperishable monuments by advising all our readers to study Sir of their genius. The causes of this James Mackintosh's valuable Frag-error lie deep in the inmost recesses of ment, and by expressing our hope that human nature. We are all inclined to they will soon be able to study it with-judge of others as we find them. Our out those accompaniments which have hitherto impeded its circulation.

estimate of a character always depends much on the manner in which that character affects our own interests and passions. We find it difficult to think