The Press.
London, England, 1856-03-22 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

" Italy," and " Hungary," has been raised,
and has received his encouragement. His
kindness has been cruel. He has nourished
expectations which have been quenched in
blood, and has led dupes on the Continent to
believe that he was a revolutionist, when he
was but a charlatan. The action of our
Foreign-office should, above all things else, be
honest, and should excite no hopes which it
did not intend to fulful.

Between the internal state and the foreign
policy of England, M. de Montalembert makes
a broad distinction. Of the latter he writes :
I do not venture to criticise, nor above all to defend, her
foreign policy. I maintain, with regard to him who has
for so many years directed it, the same opinion that I had
before the catastrophe of 1848. 1 then already saw in Lord
Palmerston—in the champion of Pacifico in Greece, and
the oppressor of the small cantons of Switzerland—a great
contempt for the rights of the weak, and a ready ally of
revolution against liberty. This opinion is amply con-
firmed by the deep sympathy he has since shown for some
ideas and some institutions, of the popularity of which no
one before 1618 would have dared to dream. The English
people have been, it must be confessed, his but too faithful
accomplices.

But, regarding our internal state, the author
unhesitatingly declares that England exhibit s
no sign of decay, that "she is not disgusted
" with her institutions, so prolific of good and
"of glory." He comprehends the varied cha-
racter of English life, and, in contrast to the
trimness of continental order, compares it to
a vast and flourishing forest, where, in the
midst of apparent confusion, there is vigour,
strength, and beauty.
He thinks lightly of our Crimean disasters
which have been so much magnified on the
Continent. "The genius of foresight had un-
" doubtedly no seat in the Cabinet" ; but he
conceives it would have been impossible for our
army, after so long an interval of peace, to
have avoided some errors or escaped disaster.
" That universal law of publicity " which
prevails in England is, he acutely supposes,
the source of much of the mistake of foreigners
in estimating its condition. They suppose
society to be disorganised, because its activity
is too bustling for their eye to follow. This
idea is admirably illustrated :

The first impression of an inexperienced person, or of
a child. entering a large manufactory, is to wonder how
one can breathe—how order can be maintained in the

midst of so crowded a population, of such constant motion
and unceasing noise—how the mind and the nerves can
bear the racket of those whirling wheels, grinding saws,
creaking screws—with the discordant whistle of the
engine, the nauseous smell of grease, the blinding clouds
of smoke; and yet all goes on smoothly, all comes right,
all succeeds; and out of this apparent confusion—this
deafening din—this swarm of men, come master-works of
ingenuity, mechanism, and industry—the arms and instru-
ments which insure the victories of our soldiers, or the
prodigies of elegance and taste which serve to adorn our
wives and daughters.
Such are, however, always and everywhere the real condi-
tions of life, of true life, of busy life, the only life worth
living for! That activity which is the strength of indi-
viduals, is also the strength of nations—habits of danger,
constant effort, liberty of motion. Who has ever dreamt
of life with a constant shade over the eyes, and with cotton
in the cars, and no support but a staff held by the hand of
a master ? When I see a man in that condition, I pity and
respect the infirmities of old age, but I do not admit it to
be a fair sample of human existence ; and when you show
me a whole nation, not only fallen into this state, but
boasting of it as the most perfect form of society, I fly
from it at least in heart and mind, and my spirit takes its
flight to those happier regions (too rarely to be found)
whose people have long since emerged from the swaddling.
clothes of infancy, without yet thinking of laying them-
selves down on the bed of decrepitude.

While contending that democracy is steadily
advancing in the world, M. de Nlontalembert
supposes that it is of two kinds: that which
" recognises the laws of honour and equity,
" which has confidence in the power of truth
" and of justice, which only requires, to insure
" their triumph, liberty to assert them ;" and
that democracy which is jealous, rancorous,
furious,—whose genius " consists in contest-
" ing and destroying all the superiorities which
" arise out of the nature of things." It is to
the latter kind of democracy that the author
supposes a certain party in this country to
belong. The noble passage following is not
less remarkable for its truth than its elo-
quence :

English literature begins to applaud power obtained by
violence, and it seems to envy those nations who have
sacrificed their public rights, their history, and their honour
to brute force incarnated in individual men.
This abject devotion to human idols under the name of
heroes—this hero-worship, as it is now called—this adula-
tion of triumphant violence has found an eloquent advoa

279

eate in Mr. Carlyle, whose admitted talent deserves to be
mentioned as having more than any other attempted to
deprave the public mind in England, and to iestroy the
prestige of her ancient institutions. After having traves-
tied the history of the French Revolution in the Rabelais
style, where the atrocities of the actors and the innocence
of the victims are confounded and laughed at with a
revolting and disgusting buffoonery, Mr. Carlyle tried to
impose on England a sort of Cromwell-worship, to begin
with. He has many admirers and many copyists. A
number of periodicals have become the echo of his doc-
trine. This adoration of Force--this kissing of the iron
hand—is nothing but a consequence—apparently paradox-
ical, but profoundly logical—of the spirit of democracy
cleverly grafted on the interests and the passions of the
moment. It may help to explain certain recent pheno-
mena of popular admiration in England which have
astonished the world. Some languishing poets make
themselves the organs and partisans of this admiration
and of this sickly envy, in some elegies which contrast
strangely with the national pride which inflamed the poets
and prose writers of the last century in all ranks of society.
We remember that in the reign of Louis XIV. the French
refugees in England published a protestation, entitled,
" The Sighs of Enslaved France for Liberty " In our
time, if the verses and prose of those panegyrists of revo-
lutionary reform were deserving of so great an honour, we
might form a miscellany of complaints, entitled " The
Sighs of Free England for Slavery.
It is not only for the meridian of France that the Eng-
lish Radical journals, such as the Daily News and the
Examiner, vaunt the blessings of a despotism so new, just,
and intelligent as ours ; even on questions of their own
domestic policy, we find this revolutionary school invoking,
in contradiction to the old institutions of England, the
gradual development of bureaucratic and centralisation—a
pernicious system which they know full well must infal-
libly undermine and destroy all the traditional strength and
the independence of their country. We might even men-
tion more than one democratic writer who has lately
addressed to Royalty direct and explicit invitations and
provocations to the Crown to shake off the yoke of parlia-
mentary control, promising it the help of the democracy,
recommending a union of the Crown and the people, to
arrive at a revolution like that of Denmark in 1660. It is
especially to Prince Altert, the Queen's husband, that
these provocations are addressed.

This fine passage, worthy of our own Burke
(whom M. de Nlontalembert resembles in some
striking particulars), was written before the
scheme was made known for destroying the
independence of the House of Peers, by a
stretch of the Prerogative in the interest of
Liberalism. In our author's judgment, the
aristocracy of England would subsist froth
the constitution of English society, even though
the House of Peers were subverted :
But this house remains at bottom what it has long been,
and what it ought to be, the bond between the past and
the present—the living archives of the Constitution—the
image of national tradition—and at the same time a check
on the sometimes too rapid movements of the machine of
government. Its part remains very important; and—the
reverse of Lord Chatham's case—the contemporary exam-
plea of Lord Liverpool, Lord Melbourne, and Lord Derby,
show that public men may become the head of the Govern-
ment, and remain there after having quitted the House of
Commons, or even, like Lord Aberdeen, without having
ever belonged to it. But, once more, it is not there that
resides the vital force of the aristocr►cy ; and I will even
go so far as to say that if the House of Lords were to be
again suppressed, as it was under Cromwell, the external
form of the English Constitution would undoubtedly be
altered in its composition, but its essence would remain
the same, and, above all, its aristocratic character and the
aristocratic spirit of the nation would not be changed.
The aristocracy is everywhere powerful in England, be-
cause there is everywhere a feeling of independence and of
energy, and of personal estimation, which is the essence of
the aristocratic principle, the principle of nature and com-
mon sense, that gives power to those who appear to deserve
it most, and are found to execute it best. That is the
true meaning of the word aristocracy—government by the
best.

To the prevalence of entails he thinks may
be mainly traced the stability and freedom of
English institutions :

If Radicalism was synonymous with liberty, if it was
not, unfortunately, in England as everywhere else, the
snare, the obstacle, the reef on which liberty runs the risk
of being wrecked, how could one understand its aversion
to an order of things so favorable to the maintenance of
the political rights of a great people, so inaccessible to the
usurpations of either ministers or monarchs? Here
lives, in truth, the principle of that legitimate activity, that
fruitful and intelligent liberty, that the English embody in
the name of self-government. Thanks to it., they may
leave to the great public powers—the Crown and the Par-
liament—the plenitude of sovereign legislation, and the
care of directing all higher political interests at home and
abroad, without thinking themselves thereby obliged to
abdicate the management of their own interests, or the
profession of their own free convictions within their own
proper circle, and without ceasing to keep an active and
jealous eye on the general march of the Government.
Thus, moreover, has been effected the marvellous alliance
which combines in the minds of all Englishmen a pro-
found respect for the rights of legal authority with the
sentiment of true personal dignity and of the highest
degree of individual liberty.
• • • • •
•
The revolutionary storm will be no serious danger to
her till that fatal day, if ever it should come, when het
public opinion shall declare itself against entails and pri•

280

mngeniture. Then, and then only, England will have
taken the first step on that steep descent which precipi-
tates nations, through the shocks of revolutions, into the
abyss of despotism.
There has been as yet but one precursive symptom of if—
the proposition made last year to the House of Commons
by Mr. Locke King, to ootain an inquiry into the law of
successions. This proposition, rejected by a considerable
majority, does not seem to have found an echo, r.or to have
left any serious trace. But it is a presage that foreseeing
men and sincere friends of liberty in England will do well
not to lose sight of, for it is through that sap that the
enemies will enter the place.

But the author's faith in the capacity of the
English people for self-government is so strong
that he supposes the nation would subsist in
full force though its political institutions
should be greatly changed ; and he instances
the case of America, where a vigorous political
society flourishes without any of the safe-
guards which protect it in England But we
think M. de Montalembert overlooks the differ-
ence between an old and a new country. In his
remarks on the English aristocracy we entirely
concur. A more graceful sentiment never fell
from patrician lips than the remark addressed
by Lord Stanley to the multitude of artisans
who crowded his father's park when it was
thrown open to them on a holiday excur-
sion :

I never have gone over this old domain of my father's,
this park and these woodi, without thinking that some-
thing was wanting to their beauty, their grandeur, and
their picturesque solitude: that something was the presence
of a number of human faces and of joyous voices. To-day
my wishes are satisfied.
The attachment of M. de Montalembert to
the Romish Church is a source of continual
error to him, for which large allowance must
be made. At the close of his eloquent essay
he contrasts the state of Spain with the state
of England in 1510, when the latter country,
exhausted from the wars of the Roses, and
without external development, was scarcely
reckoned among the important powers of
Europe; while Spain. governed by Ximeues,
and mistress of the New World by the disco-
veries of Columbus, was on the verge of uni-
versal empire. Three centuries later Spain
was nothing, while England disputed with
F►ance the first place iu the affairs of the
world. Protestants, says the author, have a
ready answer for the change. Protestantism
makes England's greatness; Catholicism
(Roman) causes Spain's decline. M. de Mon-
talembert, on the other hand, seeks the ex-
planation in the political liberty which has
given to England her prodigious power,
while despotism in Spain has prost►ated the
national strength. But can M. de Montalem-
bert be so ignorant as not to understand the
close connection between religious and politi-
cal liberty, and not to know that the latter is
the child of the former?

It was at the close of the sixteenth century
that the change in the position of the two
nations commenced. Elizabeth ruled Eng-
land, and Philip Spain. Both were despotic
sovereigns. But the one recognised the genius
of civil liberty, while the other thought only
of establishing the Inquisition. Elizabeth left
England in a state of magnificent growth, and
Philip left Spain fast falling to decay. Both
nations have remained faithful to the impetus
given to them at that time.
Differing from M. de Montalembert on some
points, we are happy to recognise in his essay
noble views on genuine Conservative prin-
ciple. If we may venture to translate the
idea of his work into few words, it is that in
Governments there is the principle of order
without liberty, as in despotic States ; and the
principle of liberty without order, as in turbu-
lent democracies ; that liberty allied to order,
and each prevailing in the highest degree
compatible with the existence of both, and
with their intimate union, realises the highest
conception we can form of perfect government ,
and that that union is practically found in the
English Constitution, and in the general weak-
ing of the English system of administration.

Journal of Adventures with the British Army
from the Commencement of the War to the
Taking of Sebastopol. By G. C. Taylor, late
95th Regiment. Tw•o Vols. London :
Hurst and B adieu.
Or all the " T. Gs. " who visited the Crimea,
Mr. Taylor seems to have been the most ad-