The Press. — London, England, 1855-04-07 00:00:00

to popular passions, and the pompous and hollow generalities which are regarded as elo quence in France ; and has always, on the other hand, been as chaste in style as Cicero, with no little of the old Roman's power of rea soning and some of his fire ; and as politician and statesman, he can boldly assert, and find none to deny, that in the midst of fearful cor ruption he was pure ; and that when almost every other man pushed his private fortune at the expense of the publio weal, he, like another Pitt, left power poor as when he entered it— nay, he may even plead, in extenuation of his responsibility for the great disaster which overwhelmed the monarchy under him, that it was his lot to rule a painper'd people, whom, debauch'd with ease, No King could govern, nor no God could please !" When such a personage as this takes pen in hand to treat of any subject he is sure of general and respectful attention. But when, as in the last number of the Revue Contempo rains, now before us, he discusses such a theme as the " disappointments " and the " hopes " of the great political party of which he is the distinguished chief, his lucubration assumes all the importance of a great political event ; and as such it cannot fail, in addition to its literary interest, to excite profound sen sation in Europe. A brief notice of its more important features will, therefore, be certainly most acceptable to our readers. The illustrious writer begins by noticing the profourul error committed by the philoso phers, statesmen, and others, who took part in the revolution of 1789, in supposing that man is essentially good, and that they had power to model society in such a way as to enable that good to develop itself freely, and thereby cause universal happiness. Man having, as religion teaches, "an innate inclination to " disobedience and license," and having, there fore, need of being held in check both by moral and human laws, this error, says M. Guizot produced the most disastrous results; it caused all the frightful horrors of the revo lution, and condemned " our fathers of 1789 to " pass from the perspective of paradise to the " scenes of hell !" No such foolish illusions, he proceeds to say, existed when the revolu- tion of 1830 was accomplished; and the estab lishment of the constitutional regime which then took place seemed of a nature to satisfy all the legitimate expectations that were formed, or that could be realised. Why, then, did that regime fail so disastrously ? It is thus that M. Guizot explains its "disappointments" and overthrow : We are in France much less advanced in virtue, and political aptitude, and enlightenment, than we fancy. We incessantly flatter ourselves, and flatter one another, to the great injury of all. Liberty has need of virtue. Nations are not capable of governing themselves except when men govern their own hearts firmly. Ido not think that I calumniate my epoch in saying that what it needs is precisely the firm govern mentof the heart. Moral good has not perished amongst us, but moral faith is wavering We did not take sufficiently into account this moral evil of our times ; we had too much confidence in the empire of habit, of in terest, of legal repression, of all external checks. . . We left the public too much exposed to the contagion of cor rupt ideas, bad spectacles, bad books, bad examples, bad influences of all kinds. We counted too much on the national morality, and at the same time did too little to defend and strengthen it. We had also too much confidence in our aptitude and enlightenment for a regime of political liberty. The politi cal , education of France has hitherto been made only in two schools—books and revolutions—two very bad and Insufficient masters to teach a people to govern themselves. Books give political intelligence which is always vague and presumptuous, and cause a disposition to dogmatise and criticise, rather than decide and act. Books, besides, do not penetrate to the masses ; so that sympathy and intel lectual equilibrium are broken off between the higher classes and the people—they cease to understand each other and to think in common. Revolutions give a more general and more efficacious political instruction ; but they throw men's minds out of the right path; they corrupt, freeze, or enervate hearts ; they spread the worship of force and fraud, instead of that of right and liberty ; they create libertines skilful in profiting by all that happens, poltroons docile to all, and plunge honest people into discourage ment We also entertained illusions II S to the conditions of our government. Immediately after a revolution, and in an access of revolutionary power, we attempted to found a monarchy, a free monarchy—and yet :he monarchical party was profoundly divided; we had, to enable us to defend the Government and the laws, only a portion of the national army of the Government and the laws. Another cause of " nos rnecomptes " is that the middle classes, THE PRESS. Sometimes from passion or want of foresight, precipi• tated themselves into novelties the most contrary to their true interests ; and, sometimes alarmed by the crises they themselves created, abandoned politics in disgust, withdrew from civil life, and ocoupied themselves only with their private affairs. _ Lastly, the middle classes showed a mis chievous jealousy of the aristocracy, and the aristocracy of the middle classes, and each tried to triumph over the other, though they were mutually dependent on one another:— They both committed the same fatal error—in turns they believed that because they had each one day van quished, each could separately suffice for all the great social interests, for resistance and progress, for order and liberty; and, stricken by disunion with impuissance, they in turn saw order and liberty, resistance and progress, perish equally in their hands ! A lesson that for those wicked men in our own country who are labouring to separate class from class ! So much as to the " disappointments " of the great party of constitutional monarchy, of moderate, well-regulated liberty in France. But, great and bitter as they are, M. Guizot declares that they do not cause him to despair : Our times are not a deviation from our past—an unfore seen accident, a strange inconsistency, a malady which has troubled sound health. For fifteen centuries we have been marching in the same path. A principle, an idea, a senti ment, whatever it may be called, has dominated for fifteen centuries all European society, and especially that of France, and has presided over all their development—the sentiment of the dignity and of the rights of man simply because he is man, and of the duty to extend more and more to all men the benefits of justice, of sympathy, and of liberty. Given by God, and proclaimed by Jesus Christ, these benefits must in the end prevail : - - - God does not deceive human kind ; nations du not con stantly deceive themselves in the course of a long destiny; an abyss is not at the end of fifteen centuries of ascen sional movement; what for fifteen hundred years has been a principle of life and progress cannot now be a cause of decadence and death. But- We must know how to act—how to wait; we must wait and act with intelligence, with perseverence, with virtue, with submission to the laws of God under the empire of which our life passes away, and our activity is exercised. He protests against the idea entertained by many persons that the constitutional regime has fallen in France never to rise again : Where is the regime which during the last sixty years has not fallen? Absolute power has failel as well as liberty— the conquests of war have disappeared as well as those of peace. The different regimes would have bad grace in treating each other with hauteur ; they have all undergone the same reverses. But the constitutional one is that which has lasted the longest. Even in falling it has not lost all its empire, and some of its greatest benefits have survived its faults and reverses. He declares that the hopes and sentiments of all young men of intelligence, whatever their class, profession, belief, and tendencies, point to - - Political life—the desire to advance in the same paths of liberal civilisation in which the French people have for many centuries made so many conquests and so much progress I And he finds that the same is more or less the case in every country in Europe, even to some extent in Russia. Ho concludes as follows : Let us, then, abandon discouragement, and at the same time our blindness, our interested reticences, our com plaisance to ourselves; let us be serious and sincere, and see things as they are. We have believed ourselves better than we are; we have disregarded the evil inherent in our nature, and consequently the necessity of struggling de cidedly and incessantly against the enemy which we carry in us. We have believed ourselves more powerful than we are; we have disregarded not only the limits of our power, but the rights of the sovereign power which governs the world and ourselves; we have not taken into the account the eternal laws of the God who made us, and we have madly attempted to put in their place and everywhere our own laws. We have believed ourselves more advanced than we are in the paths of civilisation and liberty ; en gaged in the great and rude task of founding a free Government, we have not well measured the difficulties and conditions of it; we have flattered ourselves too much that we alone could suffice to do it; we have presumed too much on our enlightenment and our strength; we have too much forgotten the general ignorance and the anarchy which knocked at our gates, and the time necessary for enlightening the ignorance and the allies necessary for combating the anarchy. Such are the true causes of our disappointments and reverses. In this there is enough to diminish our pride, but not to annihilate our hopes : our evil is of that kind which cures itself when it is well known and strongly felt. Let us pursue our object—it is founded in right, and for fifteen centuries has been laboriously sought for by Christian Europe. Let us be SATURDAY, neither surprised nor alarmed at the obstacles, the delays, and the turnings of the road. Success in great designs is always more difficult and more dearly purchased than the imagination of man dreams of; and (jo!, who promi ses everything to those who ask it of Him with wisdom, does not give them a dispensation from suffering and comb a t. Let us in particular hasten to abandon the path into whi c h the revolutionary spirit has thrown us—it will always lead to the same abysses. There can, we believe, be but one opinion as to the profundity of these views, and as to the remarkable eloquence with which they are expressed; they are du Guizot of his hap. piest moments, and in his best manner. But we confess that we could have wished the " hopes " to have been a little less general, and a little less vague. As Englishmen we like the practical, especially in politics. History of Modern Italy. From the First French Revolution to the Year 1850. By Richard Heber Wrightson. London : Bentley. Ma. WRIGHTSON in this volume has given us a very concise and clear sketch of the several political events which have taken place in the various States of modern Italy from the time of the first French revolution to the year 1850. It requires a writer of no ordinary intelligence to comprehend the tactics of the different par ties which exist in Italy, and, moreover, to possess a very intimate acquaintance with their political literature, before he can hope to delineate the real feelings and senti ments of the Italians. Mr. Wrightson appears to possess all these attributes. He has stu died the people, road their literature, examined their political condition, and, while unravelling and exposing to us the intrigues and plots of the "Young Italy " and democratic party, does not [fail to raise his voice against the real grievances of the country, the cruel oppres sions of Austrian intervention, and the utter extinction of all freedom, crushed by the stifling weight of her military occupation. The history of modern Italy from the peace of 1815 to 1850 is simply the history of repression and revolt. Any attempt at a detailed narra tive of the complications of events which have occurred for the last forty years in Italy would be far beyond the limits of our space or the patience of our readers; but we may endea vour to give a slight sketch of some of the leading characteristics of Mr. Wiightson's book, which treats of the various occurrences which have taken place since 1815, with a view, as he remarks in his preface, of pre senting such " a retrospect of the past as " may be useful in estimating the hopes " and probabilities of the future," and to de precate, rather than recommend, any inter ference by foreign sympathisers in questions "which can only be brought to a satisfactory " solution by the intelligence and fortitude of " the people whom they concern." The secret machinations of the democratic party, the military occupation of the country by Austria, the fatal misrule of the States of the Church, and the envy, hatred, and malice which characterise tile conduct of the various petty Governments one towards another, aro the reasons Mr. Wrightson assigns for the present condition of the country. In Italy there have always existed, more or less, from times immemorial, secret associations for political purposes : and it would not be an uninteresting subject for an author to trace the origin and progress of the various secret societies which have at all times of political agitation so seriously affected the course of events in Italy. In the days of the first French revolution these fraternities were revived from the languor into which they had sunk, first in Naples by the persecutions which were inflicted by the Government upon the suspected Repub licans, and finally over all the Italian States, from the intolerable oppression of the French imperial rule. The Carbonari—such was their name—hating equally all kings, gradually in creased in number and power, until, in 1815, rival sects were formed by the restored Courts of Rome and Naples— the Sanfedieti and Calderari, who engaged to defend the in terests of Government against the Republi cans. To the existence of these hostile fac tions Mr. Wrightson lays all the multiplied sufferings and miseries of modern Italy. They have perpetually proved a continual