The Express.
London, England, 1867-01-15 00:00:00

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LONDON, TUESDAY, JANUADY 15.

Mn. A DDERLEY has recently published a pam-
phlet, which ought to carry consolation to the
vexed spirit of Mr. Lowe. Thu very title of it is
soothing. He undertakes to show, by "an out-
" line tracing of the irreversible course of consti-
" tutional history," that Europe is " incapable of
" American democracy." Where Mr. LOWE
shrinks from the inevitable, Mr. Auer:atm- boldly
demonstrates the impossible. Mr. Lou c pleads
only fur a reprieve of a few years. The day must
come when the English constitution, like sacred
Troy, shall fall. All he asks is that the evil day be
not anticipated. " Let it not die tu-morrow,"he en-
treats, at the vulgar hands of the seven-pounders.
On the other hand, Mr. ADDERLEY feels all the
security which animated Marnern when the weird
assurance was given him, that till the " irrever-
" slide course" of 'later° was altered, his throne
was safe; that none of woman burn should harm
him ; and that till Biruam Wood came to Dunsi-
mine Hill, he should never be vanquished.
Mr. Anneuicv's doctrine that Asia is un-
changeably destined to despotism, Europe to
aristocracy, and America to democracy,
and that Africa is providentially shut
out from the providential scheme of human
development, seems to be nothing more than
an attempt to erect bite an irreversible law some
of the more superficially obtrusive facts of
the present time. The phenomena aro adduced
as the explanation of the phenomena. Mr. AD-
DERIEV'S theory rests 1,11 a gratuitous assumption
that things must always be as they now are.
When he ventures into detail ho falls into error
and inconsistency. When he has put Africa
under a "doom of inferiority by itself," he is
obliged to make exception of " Egypt, which is of
" Asiatic destiny, and Carthage and Cyrene, which
" are of European." Carthage, as everybody knows,
was of Asiatic origin ; and if European destiny
can get among an Asiatic people on the continent
of Africa, what becomes of the geographical dis-
crimination which is the basis of Mr. An-
DEICLEY'S theory? An American destiny may as
easily get into Europe, or a European or Asiatic
destiny into America. When tho first emi-
grants from Asia !fettled in Greece; fonOtals
1.1e3 tarifeet lAshitauis of our continent, " their
" Eastern habits," Mr. Anommeir says. " quickly
" Europeanized." We are told of " European
" accretions" which they received, though they—
an Asiatic settlement—were then the only
Europeans. Nevertheless, the despotism of the
Turks, who occupy the same geographical sesta,
and who came there when there really was not
only a European continent but a European civili-
zation, is accounted for, in Mr. ADDERLEY'S
theory, by the fact of their being—as the
Greeks were—Aaiatics. Why did they not
become Europeanized, and receive European
accretions, when they " entered fully upon
" European history "? The Greeks Europeanized
themselves, according to Mr. &moue', ; destiny
could not, under more favourable circumstances,
Europeanize the Turks ; it did Europeanize
the Magyars of Hungary, who belong to the same
race, making them the most constitutional and
aristocratic of European nations. The local destiny
appears to be very capricious in its operations ;
and we, therefore, cannot share Mr. ADDERLEY'S
confidence as to its future operations in Europe
and America.

Though his theory is gratuitous and fanciful,
and is little else, as it appears to us, than a re-
statement of the leading facts which it affects to
explain, with an assumption that they do not ad-
mit of change, his exposition embodies a good deal
of truth of some practical importance. That the
first authority in human societies is despotic—
passing through the stages of parental, path-
archal, and monarchic ; that the emigration of men
to new settlements, each bead follow-
ing its chiefs, naturally generates a system
of aristocracy, or of leaders ; that the division of
authority among several persons, in weakening
the powers of those who govern, strengthens
that of the governed, and thus tends to popular
self-rule, a tendency which will become more
marked and decisive when the migration into a
new world emancipates the settlers from the tradi-
tions and usages of the societythey have quitted--
all this is probable in itself and confirmed by fact.
But it is equally certain that before the migrations
from Asia into Europe took place, the germ of
aristocracy had come into being in the East. The
leaders must have existed before they were chosen.
It is notorious that the European emigrants to
America carried out with them the democratic
theories which Mr. ADDERLEY believes to have
been indigenous there ; they borrowed them from
the English puritans and the French Jacobins. Of
course the new ideas, aristocratic or demo-
cratic, made more rapid progress in the new
societies where everything favoured them, than
in the old countries, where institutions and usages
and vested interests contended with them. More
foundation than this we cannot discover fur Mr.