The Press.
London, England, 1856-08-02 00:00:00

ptlanb.

THE Mum. PRISONERS, charged with murder
and the intent in the late riot at Nenagh, were tried
this week at Dublin. One man, Burns, was sentenced
to death, and the remaining five sentenced to diffe-
rent terms of imprisonment, from fifteen years to ten
months.
VISCOUNT CASTLEROSSE has addressed the electors
of Kerry• on taking office. No opposition is antici-
pated to his return.

HIS EXCELLENCY THE EARL GRANVILLE, Ambas-
sador Extraordinary to the Imperial Court of Moscow,
on the occasion of the coronation of the Emperor
Alexander 11. of all the Russias, accompanied by the
Countess Granville, took his departure from Carlsbad
on Saturday last for Dresden, which capital the noble
earl and countess were to leave on Monday for Ham-
burg, en route to Kiel, where they will embark for
Cronstadt, proceeding thence to St. I'etersburg and
Moscow. The Marquis and Marchioness of Stafford,
the Earl of Dalkeith, Sir Robert and Lady Emily
Peel, the Hon. Frederick and Lady Margaret
Leveson Gower, Hon. Gerald I'onsonby, Mr. Villiers
Lister, and Dr. Sandwith—all attached to the
embassy of the noble earl—embarked at Dover on
Monday on board her Majesty's screw steamship St.
Jean d'ilere'guns, 101 Captain George St. Vincent
King, C. 8., for Cronstadt.

THE RIGHT Hos. SIR HENRY BULWER, G.C.8., left
London on Sunday for Paris, en route for Vienna and
Bucharest. His excellency was attended by Captain
Leicester Vernon, M.P.

736

fittraturt.

Ott the State of Society in France before the Re-
volution of 1789. By Alexis de Toequeville.
Translated by Henry Reeve. Loudon :

Murray.
WE are satisfied that no one can read atten-
tively this volume without acknowledging that
he never fully understood the French Revolu•
tion before. M. de Tocqueville has applied him-
self to the investigation of the causes of
that great event with an industry rarely
equalled, and a sagacity never surpassed.
With the admirable method which seems
instinctive in the French mind, and which
in his case is restrained from excess by
well-balanced judgment, he searches for the
originating powers of the revolution as acute
physicists search for the motive powers
of the convulsions which have buried cities in
ashes, or, by shocks of the earth, have pro-
strated them in ruins. In such cases of phy-
sical convulsion the causes of the outbreak
have been long accumulating: what appears
like accident brings the elements of explosion
together when they are ripe for combination.
M. de Tocqueville shows that it was just thus
with the greatest social convulsion recorded
in history. The French Revolution was not
the work of chance ; it was not a mere letting
loose of popular frenzy : it was the product of
natural social causes ; and those causes are
detailed by the author with a grasp of intel-
lect, a range of learning, and a lucidity of
arrangement, which it is impossible to admire
too highly.
Astonishing ignorance prevails among our
intelligent classes as to the state of French
society previous to the revolution. We have
heard people ordinarily well informed assert
that the French peasantry were in the lowest
state of serfdom ; that their lords made tar-
gets of their bodies for shooting practice; and
that Beaumont and Fletcher's Custom of the
Country was universal in the rural districts.
All such fables are dissipated by the account
given by M. de Tocqueville of the rural state
of France ; that account being composed from
authentic and unquestionable documents.
One principal cause of the revolution was
that political.progress in France had not kept
pace with social progress. The people grew
beyond the measure of their political fetters,
and, as the fetters would not expand, they
were burst with a convulsive effort.

No mistake can be greater than that one
into which mere economists are apt to fall—
that insurrections and revolutions are born
solely from physical distress. The contrary is
more commonly the case. when the govern.
ment of a people is less pliable and less elastic
than their physical condition. If the govern-
ment,—by which we mean not only the
supreme central administration, but all the
various forms of administration which rule or
repress a people,—is unable to adapt itself to
changes in society, and to rise with the force
which upheaves society itself, then physical
prosperity produces, not political quiet, as
some economists believe, but political con•
vulsion.

One of the most instructive passages in this
masterly and eloquent argument is that which
establishes the social progress and prosperity
of France immediately previous to the revo
lution.

That minute division of land in France
which is now generally referred to the action
of the revolution is shown by M. de Tocque-
ville to have obtained previous to the revolu-
tion, and to have been one of its causes :

The French peasant had not only ceased to be a serf;
he had become an owner of land. This fact is still at the
present time so imperfectly established, and its conse-
quences, as will presently be seen, have been so remark.
able, that Y must be permitted to pause for a moment to
examine it.

has long been believed that the subdivision of landed
property in France dates from the revolution of 1789, and
wits only the result of that revolution. The contrary is de.
monstrable by every species of evidence.
Twenty years, at least, before that revolution agricnl•
tural societies were in existence which already deplored
the excessive subdivision of the soil. " The division of
inheritances," said M. de Turgot, about the same time,
"is such that, what sufficed for a single family, is shared
between five or six children. These children and their