The Press. — London, England, 1855-12-08 00:00:00

DECEMBER 8, 1 . 855 Siterature. Contributions to the "Edinburgh Review." By Henry Lord Brougham. Three Vols. Glas gow : Griffin and Co. Tiling volumes are an evidence of the energy, the extent, and the versatility of Lord Brougham's genius. They comprise essays on oratory, ancient and modern; on history and biography ; on general principles and particular questions of foreign policy ; on con stitutional practice and reforms ; on political economy and finance ; on criminal law ; on physical science ; and on a number of literary, political, and historical subjects. To master any one of those departments would be the work of a lifetime, and we can therefore expect from the essays o f Lord Brougham, often very hurriedly written, only such reflections as naturally occur to a keen and practised intel lect on a primil-facie view of any particular question which is brought before it. The image often employed to represent the value of con centrated as opposed to diffuse thought is true,—the solid diamond far surpasses in value the same gem when shattered into a thousand sparks. Lord Brougham's was an admirable working intellect He took a lead ing part in the active business of the world, and was rarely at fault ; but he was much too busy a man to originate principles, or to com pose any works which—except for the infor mation, and especially the personal informa tion, they embody—could not easily be spared. The criticisms in these volumes are, with very few exceptions, an expanded kind of journalism : they are very long " leading articles," which, though no doubt effective at the time, seem extremely flat at the present day. Nothing is more tedious than the parti• sanship of stale politics. The labours of Lord Brougham—after ad mitting the extreme activity of his intellect — would yet appear next to incredible, if he had not himself favored us with a key to explain the diversity of his thought and the rapidity of his composition. In his brief, but just and graceful, character of Sir William Follett he enlightens us on the secret of Sir William's success upon all occasions : Though moderately provided with political knowledge, he never was deficient in the supply required by the exigency of the occasion, whether the subject of discus sion was foreign or domestic policy, economical and finan cial science, or the learning of constitutional law; for he had the happy facility possessed by the Nisi Prins advo cate of gaining information for the special emergency — the artist who must make himself acquainted with the machinery of a patent one day, the nature of a chemical process another, the tackle and steerage of a ship a third, that he may explain these matters clearly to a jury as ignorant of them when he begins his lecture as he was himself two days before, and will again be two days after, the cause has been tried. It is the facility— we question the word " happy," except in a purely professional sense—of a Nisi Prius advocate, which is con spicuous in these selections from the Edinburgh Review They are vastly clever and abundantly eloquent, but they contain very few original ideas, and afford little food for thought. The most obvious characteris , ic of these compositions is their eloquence. As regards the mina fandi of an orator—the flow, anima tion, and sustained vigour of language, often running into excess, but always effective—he had no equal in his day, and perhaps never was excelled ; but his eloquence was almost totally deficient in wit, in imagery, in refine ment, and in all those higher qualities of imaginative intellect without which no man can ever rise to the first rank of oratory. The articles with which this collection open are, largo intervalio, the best. The papers on Cicero and Demosthenes were probably com posed with unusual care. They are close, critical, and scholarly, and tend to show how high Lord Brougham would certainly have risen as an author had his life been cast in a less active sphere. The article on Demosthe nes is especially written with a nice perception of the peculiar qualities of genius and style which, after an interval of more than two thousand years, still make the orations of the great Athenian unapproachable in excellence. Lord Brougham makes a great descent when he leaves classic for English ground — the Pap of Adieu* for Westminster•hall. THE PRESS. Immediately following " Demosthenes " is a character of Lord Erskine, in which the au thor's devotion to advocacy sadly perverts his judgment. He quotes as an example of ex alted eloquence a passage from Erskine's speech in a crim. con. case commencing, I will begin with drawing op the curtains of this marriage-bed. This crim. con. style of eloquence is less esteemed now than it was when the article was written, more than forty years ago. As an example of' Erskine's success, we are told that on one occasion, when he was counsel for the plaintiff, he obtained " seven thousand pounds " damages, supposed to be the value of the " defendant's whole property" ; while in another case, in which he appeared for the defendant. the jury gave only " five hundred pounds, " barely enough to cover an application for " a divorce bill." From this, says Lord Brougham, the reader may judge whether Erskine was successful or not. It does not strike us that mere sordid advocacy can ever deserve the admiration which is due to the eloquence that springs from a sense of justice, right, or patriotism. Did the eloquence of Erskine pervert justice or not? If it did, what are we to think of its moral character ? if' it did not, why are we called on to admire the success of the advocate ? Fortunately, the finest examples of our forensic oratory can be separated from mere mercenary pleading—as when high political or constitutional questions are in debate, and the advocate views in the triumph of his client the triumph of his own principles. In the next article, on pulpit eloquence, Lord Brougham shows a very imperfect ap preciation of the peculiar merits of French oratory. Bossuet, in the notice of his " Oraisons Funebres," is described as a " clumsy preacher," and as talking " intolerable " nonsense." On this point we must allow the French critics to be much more competent judges than Englishmen, with ideas and a language essentially different, possibly can be. To show how the preacher " sickens us with " the subject and the artist," that passage is quoted in which Bossuet apostrophises the Queen of Charles I. in his oration on her death : Grande Reins ! je satisfais k vos plus tendres desirs, quand je célèbre ce monarque ; et ce cam, qui n's jamais vecu pour lui, se reveille, tout poudre est, et devient sensible, mime sous ce drap mortuaire, au nom d'un epoux 8i cher. This passage is very bold ; but the French have always admired it as sublime, and we think it impossible for any one acquainted with the genius of their language, and posses sing a spark of poetic sensibility , to read it without a thrill of wonder and delight. In his political articles, and especially in those on the war with France, Lord Brougham gave to the Whigs the support of his powerful talents. With them he held that Wellesley's expedition to the Peninsula was a capital error. In a paper written in 1809 he says : It is the conviction of many persons, whose judgment commands peculiar respect, and the more so because later events appear to support it, that there was at no time any reasonable chance of driving the French out of the Penin sula ; and that, consequently, no British army should ever have been sent there at all. The first operations of Wellington in Spain, and his glorious victory of Talavera, are criticised in no friendly spirit : The British general was attacked in front by a superior force. A rare mistake of the French general, his own firmness and skill, and the extreme gallantry of English soldiers, not only saved him from destruction, but enabled him to repulse the enemy. A large army, however, the very same that he had somewhat whimsically boasted of having dedroyed a few weeks before, came down npon his rear, and he was compelled to fall back upon Portugal with the utmost rapidity. Scarcely hoping to carry off the vic torious English, he left the invincible Spaniards to get one more beating; and was in this plight driven ont of the country which he came to save by one army which he had completely beaten, and another which he had entirely de stroyed. These paragraphs may serve to show the spirit in which Lord Brougham deals with the party politics of his time. His advocacy is so determined, that it would be as irrational to look in these articles for a fair statement of political questions, as it would be to expect an equitable view of a cause from a Nisi Prius barrister retained on one side of it. From this censure, however, must be ex cepted the paper at the commencement of the 1171 second volume on the " Balance of Power," published in 1803. It is written in an impartial spirit, its views are large, and its principles sound ; and the whole argument shows that when Lord Brougham gas e his capacious in tellect fair play, he could feel as a patriot and reason as a statesman. The object of the article is to defend the principle of " the " Balance of Power" from the objections urged against it ; and as much of the reason ing is applicabld to the present situation of affairs, we are tempted to make a few extracts. Far from condemning the wars of the eighteenth century, undertaken to curb the power of France, as unnecessary, he lauds them as happily distinguishing the " proudest " era in the annals of the species." He views the general security of Europe as due to that perfect knowledge of the arts of administration which has established certain general rules of conduct among nations; has prevented the overthrow of empires, and the absorption of weak States into the bodies of devour ing neighbours ; has set bounds to the march of conquests, and rendered the unsheathing of the sword a measure of the last adoption ; whereas, in other times, it was always resorted to in the first instance. The partition of Poland, he contends, was not attributable to the inefficiency of the balancing system, but to the internal rottenness of that kingdom : The case of Poland, as it appears to us, is one of the very few instances, which have ever occurred, of a nation being placed in such unnatural circumstances of embarrass ment, turbulence, and degradation of every sort, that scarce any change of affairs could render it worse, and scarce any revolution, by domestic violence, or foreign invasion, could fail to alter it for the better. Setting apart the high-sound• ing phrases of patriotism and national spirit, and the feel ings of admiration which the very natural emotions of pity have taught us to couple with the name of Poland, it is impossible for a sober minded observer not to perceive, that ages of the most debasing servitude had utterly dis qualified the Polish boors for enjoying the privileges of tree subjects ; that a lifetime divided between unceasing tumult in public, and the revellings of a boisterous, bar barons hospitality, had unfitted the rest of the State from cooperating in the formation of a constitution which should possess either energy or regularity ; and that greater part of the country has gained by a dismemberment, wept over and declaimed upon by those who had no ex perience of its necessity, or need of its benefits. Those benefits have most undoubtedly been the pacification of that unhappy kingdom, by the only means which could have been devised for accomplishing this end, without en dangering the security of the other States, namely, a divi sion of the country among the neighbouring and rival powers, and a consequent communication of the inestimable blessings which their ancient subjects enjoyed under a system of peaceful government and regular police. On the principles which justify interference with a State which from great increaso of power threatens the security of other States, it is observed : No one would think of asserting the right of interference to be applicable in the case of gradual improvement, how ever great, in any nation ; nor in the case of that more sudden amelioration which national resources may is receive from the operation of a salutary reform—or a useful law—or a beneficial change of rulers. We only think the right competent in cases of sudden and great aggrandise ment, such as that of France in 1790; and then, we main tain, that, if it endangers the safety of the neighbouring powers, no manner of importance should be attached to the nature of those circumstances from whence the danger has originated. In the following paragraph, attempting to de fine the circumstances which constitute natural enmity or natural alliance, there is not, we think, sufficient distinction drawn be tween rivalry and hostility : The circumstances which are found to constitute natural enmity between nations are threefold ; proximity of situa tion, similarity of pursuits, and near equality of power. From the opposite causes arise the natural indifference or relative neutrality of States; a reasonable distance, diver sity of objects, and considerablo inequality of resources; while natural alliance results from the common enmity pro duced by a concurrence of the three causes first mentioned in the relations of two or more posers towards the earns third power. It is too broadly stated in other passages that France is the natural enemy, and Austria the natural ally, of England. The concluding passage of this able article is one of the finest and most thoughtful that ever proceeded from Lord Brougham's pen: — It appears that, by the modern system of foreign policy, the fate of nations has been rendered more certain, and the influence of chance, of the fortune of war, of the caprices of individuals upon the general affairs of men, has been exceedingly diminished. Nations are no longer of transient or durable existence in proportion to their in ternal resources, but in proportion to the place which they occupy in a vast and regular system, where the moat powerful States are, for their own ukes, constantly watching over the safety of the most insignificant. A flourishing commonwealth is ofnt liable to lose its d2z deuce or its prosperity by the aof one battle.