The Sun.
London, England, 1846-11-02 00:00:00

LITERATURE.

1? I' ERLY RE VIE ti," No. (..; LT I.
out the principle that extremes meet, thti
commencement and the conclusion of the present
number constitutes its chief attraction. In the first
article we are afforded a very interesting retrospect
of the origin and prosecution of the " Fortifications
of Paris ;" in the last article the reviewer obliges the
world with some additional observations upon the
" Close of Sir Robert Peel's Administration." Upon
the former theme we cannot reflect for a single
moment without entertaining sentiments of the
deepest sorrow, and, to a certain extent, of absolute
humiliation. What might not have been the condition of
France at this moment, supposing those fortifications to
have been in existence during the past two centuries ?
Might not the shackles of feurlality have still debased
her population ? Might not her citizens have still
been liable to an endless incarceration at the will of
some arbitrary sovereign, by the signature of a lettre
de cachet? Might not the rights of property have
been still rendered precarious by confiscation,
and the national revenues have been still
sustained by the infliction of despotic im-
posts ? Had Paris been girdled by those
massive battlements, and threatened with 2,188'
pieces of heavy ordnance and 120 field guns, is it

TH I

U;,rr~ it

possible that ,Delaunay would have been compelled
to yield the Bastille ? Would the mob have been
able so readily to reach the tennis-court of Versailles
in 1789, and to drag Louis XVI. into the capital in
that bacchanalian triumph which was inaugurative of
their emancipation ? Would not Lafayette, instead
of pleading at the bar of the Assembly for the resti-
tution of what he designated the constitutional
powers to the monarch, would he not rather have
marched direct upon the metropolis at the head of his
legions and have battered their chimney-pots about
the ears of the Parisians ? It is from the considera-
tion of these facts, from a knowledge that anything
like a successful combat against a feudal despotism,
or a confederated oligarchy, in the event of either of
those malign authorities having been armed origi-
nally with such repressive instruments as
these fortifications, that we reflect upon their
foundation and completion with such unmitti-
gated sorrow. It is because we are persuaded that
such an auxiliary might, in 1791, have rendered the
royal confederates of Pilmitz triumphant, because
we conceive it might have tended to the yet more
signal debasement of the tiers etat, because, in fine,
in those fortifications we recognise the antagonism of
the grandest struggle for the attainment of constitu-
tional liberty ever adventured in civilised times, that
we are disposed to lament the extraordinary struc-
tures so recently raised round the French capital.
Those embattlements might unquestionably guard
Paris from the invading forces of a Blucher, a Wel-
lington, or an Alexander; but it is infinitely more
than probable they would prevent an outraged people
from punishing the profligate domination of a Ca-
lonne, or of thwarting the peddling inefficiency of a
Necker. We are somewhat puzzled to conjecture
the motives which could have influenced M. Thiers in
acceding to the proposition for their erection during the
recess of 1841. Possibly that sagacious statesman
did not regard them with those apprehensions in a
contingent emergency which are rendered inevitable
at this advanced period. Possibly the expense which
they had already entailed upon the Exchequer in that
year, namely, 5,600,0001., did not afford him an ade-
quate conception of the enormous sum they have since
required for their completion. The Quarterly Re-
view avouches that these works at Paris will fully
answer the purpose of what its writer supposes to be their
original purpose, of "putting the capital in a cage!"
There's a reflection for the revolutionists of 1830 !
Paris put in a cage ! Much valuable information in
castrametation and the science of fortification, par-
ticularly as applied to modern times, and especially
as in reference to our neighbours and their metro-
polis, may be gleaned from this contribution. In the
terminating paper of this number, the most remarkable
feature is a quotation from a work published in 1845,
by M. Capefigue, and entitled Hommes d' Etat. The
predictions of that French historian, while they some-
times evince his discernment, and illustrate, in a dis-
tinguished manner, that remark of Edmund Burke,
that " foreigners are a kind of contem-
poraneous posterity," are mingled, nevertheless, with
the most egregious and extravagant day-dreams.
What shall we say of that vaticination, "Si l'lrlande
persiste, ce sera M. Peel qui cons'-ntira a sa separation,
a son Parlement national, a defaire l'ceuvre de cin
quainte ans?" What again shall we • say of that
companion prophecy, " Que les Radicaux, a leer tour,
persistent, it viendra peutetre an jour ou 112. Robert
Peel accomplira la ?V'orme absolue avec le Parlement
annuel, a la facon de Cobbett et de Hunt ?" If the
felicitous assurance of another paragraph " que Sir
Robert Peel a tile le parti Tory," may be taken as a
conclusive testimony of M. Capefique s claim to be
considered auricular, Mr. O'Connell may exult in the
anticipated achievement of the repeal; while the
shades of the great Member for Oldham and of Henry
Hunt will rejoice at the prophetic realisation of their
visions. But not unless. Throughout this article in
the Quarterly we can discern the disappointment of the
agriculturists still rankling under an affectation of re-
signation ; we can still discern the animosity
to the late Premier beneath a film of in-
sidious flattery; we can still recognise the
old stubbornness of monopoly renewing itself again
and again, after it had been as repeatedly vanquished
by the indisputable facts and overwhelming logic of
the more intelligent advocates for free trade. We
shall not waste our own time, or that of our readers,
by going over the same arguments .which have al-
ready been repeated a thousandfold in our own co-
lumns, and which arguments, though in almost every
disinterested man's mouth, whether in Parliament or
out of Parliament, especially during the past ten
months, this reviewer seems never to have heard.
The old sophisms which Mr. Cobden has exposed long
since, which have been likewise dissipated by Mr.
Bright, Mr. Villiers, and Mr. Milner Gibson, spe-
cious phantoms of objections which have in some in-
stances been laid by the pamphlets of Colonel Thomp-
son, and the letters by Mr. Fox in the League news-
paper, are here revived, as though their flimsiness
were not apparent to ninety-nine per cent. of the
population. In a similar manner the truths of free
trade—apparent as the moon at its full to
almost everybody else—are still utterly invisible
to the writer. When Galileo first published his nun-
cius siderius, declaring among other marvels the ex-
istence of satellites in the vicinity of Jupiter, and the

periodical disappearance and reappearance of spots
upon the disc of the sun, one of that great man's an-
tapnists, a peripatetian and a rival professor, gravely
printed a book, in which he declared that he had a
telescope of his own, that he had looked through that
telescope, that the assertions of Galileo Galilei were

monstrous mistatements, that the surface of the sun
was emaculate, that Jupiter was unattended by satel-
lites! What iat peripatician was to astronomy, these
protectionists are to political economy. They have
alltmhensetvidemenicneesnot tho
senses,of theirfrom Dr.
all the
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downwards, all the testimony of experience, calling
pc acknowledge tyh
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Notwithstandingetin induce
this wilful
them to forsake
their
of the recent
pertinacity, we are still sanguine as to the acknow-
ledgement of the advantages of an unrestricted com-
merce even by the bitterest antagonists
Parliamentary innovations. Not only, 07V eve
h
the w writer t enrf ins
utehhe
aQua
changerter lyam san
gconvincedhe theEonfoish
m pro-
bability
protec-
tionists, but his scepticism is of a gigantic and cos-
mopolitan order. "On the whole, then," S ayshe,
and m o rhee
aarn, dfromorefrom
allconvinced
3,
thatby
ewe promisere d,
a"nwdeseaer,e
that our free-trade mania is likely to meet with any-
thing like the reciprocity from any foreign powers
of the New World or the Old, will turn out to be
a lamentable deception." A wonderful conclusion to
arrive at, truly ! Why the very American tariff, over
which he has been exulting in the preceding para-
graph, is a step taken in the right direction. It is
only a single and comparatively unsatisfactory step,
we will grant, but still it is an assurance
that the passion for mercantile liberation has
already acquired votaries in the Western hemi-
sphere. Nor is that the only instance of the
progression of free trade principles among nations
that can be adduced. -Does not the reviewer know
that a society for the dissemination of these liberal
views in commerce is in active operation in France ?
Can he be ignorant of the fact that similar endea-
vours are being made in Belgium—that the ancient
states of Italy and Germany are being rapidly inno-
ciliated with the same benificent aspirations—that a
second League is on the eve of formation in the
Iberian peninsula? Does he not know that that
same Richard Cobden, whom he wishes to hold up to
public retrobation as a political firebrand, and as an
agitator and a demagogue, is receiving a kind of
moral ovation in the European states through which
he is passing ? As to the " int lligent American
gentleman," (a friend of a friend of the writer in the
Quarterly Review), who designates the farewell speech
of Sir Robert Peel on the occasion of his late retirement
from office " a parting stab to the interests he had
abandoned," we can only answer that the majority
of the countrymen of that great minister look back
to that incident, and to the sentiments then avouched
by him, as the most admirable of his whole public
career. Yes ; let Us repeat that noble peroration of
that most memorable address—let us repeat it, not to
constitute it, like the reviewer, a text for invidious
insinuations, but to reanimate, if that be necessary,
the gratitude of the English people to one of their most
self-forgetful benefactors, and one of their most self-
sacrificing patriots.

" I shall leave office, I fear, with a name severely
censured by Palmy E.tQn9nrable Gentlemen, who, 04