The Press.
London, England, 1857-12-05 00:00:00

THE PRESS, DECEMBER 5, 1857.

attenuation or aggravation any personal motive or Any
historical fact. 1 have endeavoured to be, ust—l am sure
that I have not written a word that Ido nut believe to be
the truth !
The early attention which I was thus led to pay to the
Revolution has been actively sustained through a long life,
and made me a collector (I believe to a much greater
extent than any other person in England) of the innu-
merable pamphlets and periodical and other publications
that I may say deluged France as long as anything like a
freedom of opinion existed, as well as of those which were
afterwards published under the corrupt and intimidating
influence of the successive tyrannies, which found little
difficulty in converting a licentious and disgraced press
into a rigorous and shameless engine of despotism. These
publications, however ephemeral in interest, or apocryphal
as authorities, are still valuable and important as contem-
poraneous evidence, both positive and negative, for what
they tell, and, for what they do not, are often as instructive
in their falsehood as in their truth.
We must, however, remark that Mr. Croker
allowed feelings of " class" to interfere with
his judgments. That such should be the case
was not unnatural in one who must have re-
collected how the ascendancy of property in
his native country was menaced by a combi-
nation of the revolutionary agent:les in Ire-
land and by the French Directory. Through
all his career, Mr. Croker retained sincerely
much of the feelings of an " alarmist." He
saw how " revolution" was disguised under
soft words, and how conventional lan-
guage was employed to forward anti-con-
stitutional measures. The coarse and fierce
passions which impelled the masses in France
were not exaggerated by Mr. Croker, but we
do not think that lie looked profoundly into
some of the chief causes by which France
was powerfully influenced.
The centralisation of all the political life at
Paris made the capital of disproportioued im
portance. Whoever mastered Paris possessed
France, and, with weak sovereigns or trea
cherous ministers, revolutions in such a
country might always be anticipated. The
social structure in France, the comparative
equality of conditions, the absence of a terri-
torial aristocracy and of a great provincial
gentry, and the want of large towns like Bir-
mingham, Liverpool, and Each other seats of
activity, leave Paris unbalanced, and that com-
position of society in France can be clearly
traced to the original policy of Richelieu. The
difference between the social structures in
England and France must never be overlooked,
because there is considerable resemblance
between some of the phases of the English
revolution in the seventeenth century and the
changes in France from 1789 to 1848. Mr.
Croker has ably indicated these points of re-
semblance :
Charles I. Louis XVI.
Unpopularity of the Queen. Unpopularity of the Queen.
The Long Parliament. The
y. self-constituted Assem-
bl
Flight to the Isle of Wight. Flight to Varennes.
Trial and execution. Trial and execution.
Government by the Parlia- Government by the Conven-
ment. lion.
Cromwell. Tiuonaparte.
Expels the Parliament. Expels the Assemblies.
Military despotism. Military despotism.
Richard Cromwell set aside. Napoleon 11. set aside.
Restoration of Charles 11. Restoration of Louis XVIII.
Amnesty to all but regicides. Amnesty to all but regicides.
Popish and Ryehouse plots. Conspiracies of Berton,
Buries, 6:c.
Unpopularity of the Duke of Unpopularity of Count
York. d'Artois.
Outcry against the Jesuits. Outcry against the Jesuits.
James 11., late King's Charles X., late King's
brother. brother.
Suspected birth of the Pre- Suspected birth of D. of
tender. Bordeaux.
Royal Declarations of indul- Royal Ordinances.

gence.
Convention Parliament. Meeting of the dissolved
Chamber. _ _

.....
Flight and abdication of the Flight and abdication of the
King. King.
Expulsion of him and his Expulsion of him and his
family family.
They take refuge in France. They take refuge in Eng-
land.
This is certainly very curious, but the resem-
blance is rather one between effects than
one between causes. There was no
social revolution under Cromwell, and
the laws of property and criminal procedure
remained the same. In France, on the other
hand, there had been a total revolution in
opinions and sentiments, and in no age of
civilisation had there ever been witnessed such
fearfully rapid transitions of society. Nor can
we forget that the parallel breaks down in one
most important point iu relation to the dy-

1183

nasties. In 1688, and subsequently, there
was not the least desire amongst any portion
of the English to re-establish the family of
Cromwell in the Protectorate, while in France
an enormous majority elected Louis Napoleon
to the Presidency of the Republic in preference
to General Cavaignac, and afterwards the
whole nation acquiesced in the installation of
his Imperial Majesty Napoleon 111.

In this valuable volume, the leading essays
are upon the mistakes of Thiers, the false-
hoods of Lord Holland, and on various pas-
sages in the martyrdom of Louis XVI. and
Marie Antoinette ; and the article on " Tho
Guillotine" is added. Mr. Croker does not
appear to have reviewed the letters and cor-
respondence of Mirabeau published at Paris
in 1851. if the plan given by Mirabeau
secretly to the Court had been followed, there
was a chance of turning the revolution. The
plan proposed a rapid flight to Fontainebleau,
having first stationed there a regiment of ascer-
tained fidelity to the King. Once at Fontaine.
bleau, the King should have issued a procla-
mation appealing to the people of all France,
promising improved measures for their social
welfare, but peremptori'.y declining to be
coerced by the populace of Paris. But Louis
XVI. then, as afterwards, was wanting to him-
self in vigour. Mr. Croker's deliberate opinion
on the King's feebleness is worth specially
noting. He first states the manner in which
the King was arrested at Varennes :
All the accounts represent the town as buried in sleep,
so that not only the courier, but even the King and Queen,
knocked up the inhabitants of the suburb to inquire for
their horses : in the meanwhile Drouet arriies, passes the
royal carriages in the suburb, ordering the postilions not
to proceed further; while he and Guilleautne enter the
town, where he appears to have conducted his enterprise
with a coolness and sagacity that would have done him
honour in a better cause. He gave no alarm, but quietly
collecting half-a-dozen other persons, whose principles he
probably knew to be his own, they first pushed on to the
bridge, which they barricaded by overturning on it a waggon
laden with furniture, which they happened to find there :
they also barricaded the road, alarmed the town, assembled
the magistrates, collected the mob, and arrested the
carriages under the gatcless arch of the town-wall, and
finally, forcing the travellers to alight, took them to the
house of one Sausse, the Procureur de la Commune, in a
bye-street, where they were finally arrested. In all these
preliminary proceedings Drouet expressly says that " they
were in al'. but eight patriots, de bonne vol4mte."
And Madame Royale wrote :
We then alighted, and in crossing the street six mounted
dragoons passed us, but unfortunately they had no officer
with them ; if there had been, six resolute men would have
intimidated them all, and might have saved the King.
On which Mr. Croker makes this remark :
There were not merely six bat sixty men in barracks in
the next street. We believe with Madame that six, or even
one, resolute man would have had then, and for an honr or
two later, a chance of saving the King, but the King him-
self wanted the resolution even to consent to be saved.
We quite concur with Mr. Croker. It is
utterly impossible that such events as those
of the French Revolution could have happened
if Louis XVI. bad the personal spirit of our
English King, George 111. Louis was ready
to meet death with the fortitude of a Chris-
tian, but he wanted the spirit of a French
monarch.
On the peculiarly exposed position of the
Tuileries, Mr. Croker observes, in an original
note appended to this edition :
The great work of completing the projected junction of
the Tuileries and the Louvre has been of late carried out
with great architectural magnificence and effect ; and the
palaces are better protected from a popular coup-de-main
by the inclosure on the north aide, which makes the whole
something of a fortress; but I do not understand how it
can ever be made more than a palace for show and cere-
mony. If Louis Philippe, too confident in his popularity
with so changeable a people, hail not made it a family resi-
dence, and been thereby embarrassed with a crowd of
women and chhlren, whose safety could not be perilled,
the •.I.4th February•, 1848, would probably have had a diffe-
rent result.
And he adds this curious story :
M. de Talleyrand seems to have foreseen something
of this danger to which the Palais Royal was also liable.
The day or two after his arrival in London, in 1830, as
ambassador, I met him at dinner at the Duke of Welling-
ton's. He talked freely and not reverently of the new
revolution, and represented the King as very little his own
master in the whole affair. Some one mentioning the
inconvenience of his position in Paris, Talleyrand said
" Oui ;" and then added, with his peculiar look and tone
of grave pleasantry, " avant de part ir j'ai pris la liberte de
conseiller a Sa Majesto de fair nn grand coup politique—
rnais un tres grand coup." We wire all attention and
curiosity. " Ceuta d'aller passer, aussitOt qu'elle l•
pourrait, quelques jours a Neuilly."

1184

But, if the King apprehended danger from the
mob of Paris, Neuilly would have beck too
near. He should have gone farther off. In
such anticipated contingencies, Fontainebleau,
a kingly residence, too far away to be reached
by a mob, and yet near enough to Paris for the
purposes of personal administration of affairs,
is (as Mirabeau ably indicated) the proper
place for a French sovereign in difficulty.
The essay upon the calumnies of Lord
Holland upon Marie Antoinette is of first-rate
importance. We are sorry that the whole of
Mr. Croker's article on Lord Holland is not in
this volume, but enough of it is printed to
crush for ever the historical pretensions of
his lordship. On another subject—the charge
that Mr. Pitt's Government had fomented the
early proceedings of the French Revolution—
Mr. Croker writes :
We have consulted political friends and colleagues of
Mr. Pitt; we have had access to the public and private
correspondence of our ministers and ambassadors at the
principal courts of Europe, and especially at Paris ;—and
we can conscientiously declare that we have not found the
slightest ground for suspecting that England fomented,
directly or indirectly, any of the revolutionary disturbances
of France; but that, on the contrary, the English sove-
reign and ministers viewed them with unfeigned regret—a
feeling from the most public manifestation of which they
were only restrained by their respect and regard for the
French monarch himself; by their reluctance to incur the
risk of offending the susceptibility of the French people ;
and by their anxiety not to afford the ill-disposed in either
country the slightest excuse for accusing Louis of having
asked, or the King of England of having offered, any inter-
ference in the internal affairs of France.

And in this edition there is the following note
appended on that passage :
I consulted individually on this point Lords Grenville
Westmorland, Spencer, and Chatham, the only survivors of
Mr. Pitt's Cabinet; and Lords Wellesley, Liverpool,
Rarrowby, Mulgrave, Sidmouth, and Farnb,,rough, Messrs.
Canning, Rose, and Huskisson, and indeed every other
person then living who had held high office in Mr. Pitt's
first administration, and, as might be expected, all
solemnly denied that there was the slightest colour for
any such imputation.
On the literary value of the histories by
Thiers we regret to differ from Mr. Croker.
The early works by Thiers are of compara-
tively little importance, but his history of the
" Consulate and the Empire" is a production
of costly labour, and it contains a variety of
matter most ably narrated•. Allowance in all
cases must be made for national feelings,
whether the writer be English or French,
Alison or Thiers. It is the earlier works
of Thiers to which the criticism in this
volume is chiefly applied. But as he has
advanced in his work Thiers has undoubtedly
taken more pains, and its literary value is
considerable. There are admissions, also, in
its pages which we believe to be of great
value. He has written of the Church of
Rome with great boldness, and has revealed
much of the working of her machinery. We
doubt whether any of our contemporaries would
take such extreme views of M.lfhiers as Mr.
Croker has done; and it is certainly open to
any Jesuit, when facts are quoted from Thiers,
to say, "Oh ! look at Mr. Croker's opinions
" upon Thiers." We do not like the manner,
either, in which Mr. Croker refers to Sir Archi
bald Alison. That emiaent writer had a
sincere desire to tell the truth, and his history
has had prodigious success. He hat to
struggle, also, against the enormous size of his
work, and there are many passages in it of
powerful and effective composition.
But the controversial value of these essays
is beyond question, and we think that they
should find a place in every historical library.
The " French Revolution ' was such a pro-
digious change, and led to such awful conse-
quences, that its history ought to he accurately
known; and Mr. Croker has contributed largely
to a right understanding of it.

The Life of Alexander Pope. Includinv,
Extracts from his Correspondence. By
Robert Carruthers. London : Bohn.

THERE are few men about whom so little is
known in proportion to what has been written
as Alexander Pope. The stream of criticism
which has flowed without a moment's stagna-
tion for upwards of a century has not run
itself clear. The last biography is just as
opaque as the first. In fact, we may say more
so; for the successive discoveries which have
been mndo (hiring this long period have only
serve -I • • elements of complexity. Be-