The Sun.
London, England, 1846-06-01 00:00:00

MAGAZINE DAY, •
BLACK WOOD'S.
An unusual variety of articles characterises .131 ac,li,
wood for June ; hut from the inferences which are ae-
duced from it, and the scholarship which is evidencei
of
ZU
its composition, the dissertation upon the de Fall-
Rome" assumes the most prominent position. In thewriter of this paper we recognise either a man versed 0
classic lore, and willing, for the sake of an ingenious hr
pothesis, to contort the significance of past events to se
particular meaning, or one who, while imbued with *
knowledge of the occurrences of antiquity, regards
them only through the distortion of prejudice. We aro
inclined to attribute the unphilosophical arguments
contained in his lucubration to the former cause ; espe-
cially as we cannot conceive the possibility of any well'
read and thinking student being so little of a logician
as to advance reasonings so totally averse to common
sense. Let us see now what is the precise delinquency
against which we are thus inveighing. It is, then, as
follows :—The author, as a contributor to Ebony, see?,
the advantage which might result from, and the creelo
which would be attributed to, a dissertation demonstrates
ing the fallaciousness of those who now- a-days are,
thank God, abolishing the atrocious corn-laws ; and he
perceives that this credit and this advantage would be
sevenfold if; by any ingenuity of disputation,
however
fraudulent, the question were enforced by some striking
coinc'dence of fact in ancient history. So far his con'
elusions are rational and allowable ; but fer the Poe'
sided purpose of illustrating the protective system in this
manner, he altogether overlooks the greatest duty of e
political economist, and what is equally the chief neces-
sity of a logical commentator, that of adhering strictly
to the honest. narration of facts, and of neither tam-
pering with the truthfulness of the historian
for a mere party object, or of imposing upon
the credulity or ignorance of his reader by s
false use of his own erudition. Now, we dis-
tinctly impugn the writer of this dishonesty,
this imposture, and this shameful employment of learn:
hz, merely with the view of pandering to the political
partialities of partisanship. He audaciously attempts to
apply the destruction of the Roman empire to the (Joni'
mercial controversy now agitating the English public*
He assumes the downfall of that marvellous power as *
fair prototype of what he implies must result from the
establishment of a free-trade policy in our native coun-
try. He rejects the aphorism of Montesquieu, that the
decay of Roman authority was the natural consequence
of the extension of its territories ; in like manner he
throws aside, as wholly inconclusive, the idea that that
decay originated in the preva'ence of serfdom under the
later emperors ; and with the intention of carrying out
his original design, he attributes the " Fall of Rome "
solely and exclusively to the circumstance of its rulers
permitting the free importation of provisions from its
colonial possessions. According to him, that importa-
tion of corn and cattle from Egypt, and Lybia, and
Sicily, at first enervated and finally extinguished the
agricultural energy of the mother country ; according
to him, a considerable portion of Italy degenerated to
barrenness from a previous state of fertilisation, entirely
from that introduction of foreign grain. Now, stir
posing, for the sake of argument, that all these asser-
tions hold good (which they do not !), and that his de •
ductions are correct in regard to the heathen empire
(which we deny !), the whole aim of his rev"
zoning is nugatory, the entire fabric of his inferences
falls to the ground, because THERE IS NO SPECIES of
ANALOGY IVUATEVER BETWEEN TEIE POLITICAL OR COMP
MERCIAL, OR AGRICULTURAL POSITION OF ENGLAND AND
or ROME ! It is an incontrovertible aphorism in logic
that a comparison between two things altogether disian-
lar is by necessity altogether inadmissible. Now we
can demonstrate, in a few sentences, that the position of
England, and the position of Rome, are two things es"
sentially dissimilar, consequently the comparison of :hem
is absolutely inadmissible, and, being in admissible,
the conclusions arrived at from that comparison go for
nothing. That, we take it, is an unanswerable propo-
sition. First of all, then, for the non-existence of any
thing analogous between the Roman and the British
Empires. The Romans were, be it observed, a people
of warriors, a people almost entirely engaged in the
prosecution of warfare ; the bulk of them was portioned
out in cohorts and legions ; the nation, or more strintlY,
speaking, the Roman citizens, travelled in a body, swore.
in hand, upon Gaul, upon Africa, upon Spain, upon
Germans-, upon Britain. They conquered those regions
irict rendered them subsidiary to the great core of an-
thority—te the Great City. A minority of the Romans
were agriculturists in the vicinity of Rome, a minority
of that minority wore artizans in the streets of Rome
but the vast majority of those citizens had carried the
sword, had fought the battle, had swelled the carnage
consequent upon a military government. When, how-
ever, the opportunity of engaging in warfare had
become a matter, well nigh of impossibility, from
the circumstance of the Romans having subverted
nearly the whole of the then known world
.eol:
their own indomitable prowess, and under the !
dership of Caesar, and Pompey, and Trajan, and 5'
forth, a continuance of their former exertions was
rendered unnecessary. A comparatively
insignificant
force—a standing army—was scattered at intervals
upon the frontiers of the colossal empire to awe the
new subjects into submission, and to assert the dor-
mant strength of Rome in case of an emergency. By
this state of things the citizens may be said literally to
have "retired from business" for the more leisurely
enjoyment of the proceeds of their labour. Subsidiary
nations tilled the ground, and worked the mine, and ir-
rigated the soil, and reaped the harvest " in the sweat
of their brow " for the support of the luxurious and
indolent Romans : prodigious was the wealth of the
Romans that home labour became absolutely super-
fluous. While the rest of the world was drudging to
administer food and raiment to the rulers of the
world, those rulers saw no reason to trouble them-
selves with any effort, save an effort for the extol.
sion of their amusements. Their slaves—those slaves
who in the struggling days of Rome had populated the
workshops and the homesteads—were now enlisted as
accessories to the recreations of their. Epicurean row
rers. Gladiators wrestled in the amphitheatres, the
great city became the arena of one interminable car-
nival, every individual Roman lived a life of the most
profligate extravagance, the most consummate luxury,
the most unremitting idleness. Their limbs were hence
enfeebled by efliminacy, their courage was emasculated;
political imbecility supervened upon social abandon-
ment ; their warriors straggled homewards and were
soon swallowed up in the contagion of indolent
enjoyment, until the cohorts which they had de-
serted were composed in time of enlisted bar-
barians and mercenary swordsmen. These we con-
ceive to be the real motors in " the fall of Rome,"
and not the free importation of provisions. After de-
scribing, as we have just done, the political, commercial,
and agricultural condition of that empire, it is surely
unnecessary to particularise the precise want of analogy
between it and the position of Great Britain—their dis-
similarity is so glaring and so undeniable. The Romans,
as we have said, were luxurious revellers, simultaneously
with the free importation of provisions; we English
are a striving, labouring, agricultural, mercantile,
money-getting race : our middle class is our chief
class ; we eat our bread by the sweat of our brow.
Napoleon called us, rightly enough, a nation of shop-
keepers ; and such will continue our position when free
trade comes into operation. We possess vast factories
through the medium of which our home-made merchan-
dise may be exchanged for whatever corn, or wine, or
oil, or oxen will be imported. Had the Romans these
factories? We possess such advantages in scientific
knowledge as applied to agriculture, that our farmers
are second to none in the wide world. Had the Romans
these advantages? Our princes are mostly devoted to
agricultural pursuits, at the moment when free trade is
proposed. Were the Roman patricians so in like manner? •
Our country is threaded with a multitude of railways,
whereby it is but a step from the corn-field to the corn-
market, from the pasture land to the butcher's shams
bles, rendering competition with remote growers of grain
and fatteners of cattle little more than nominal. Had
the Romans these railways? The questions are their
own emphatic answers in the negative. Assuredly the
dissimilarity between the state of Rome and England is
so preposterously evident, that any amplification up!,ll
the matter would be an egregious impertinence. We
have already (and our readers must in candour admit
it) proved clearly that nothing analogous subsists be-
tween those two things; reason has already informed us
that a comparison of two such dissimilar things is logic-
ally inadmissible, and, being inadmissible, the whole
argument necessarily drops to the ground. The paper
in Blackwood on the " Fall of Rome" is, therefore, an
impotent nonentity. It is, however, because it is spe-
ciously, and learnedly, and elegantly written, and
ti°bee-
es in Out-
cause, on these accounts, it might possibly
unreflective, that we have deemed it
a length.. We
its inconsistency and absurdity at such
at-
tention of the writer in old Nag'
commend our foregoing observations
4.,
coloured sketches of
Out-
line" are amusing d with smartness. "Elinor
sarcasm, and pencilled with
mawkish,
Travis" we regard as a veryexaggerated,
en,t;ttiotnhgeuzasteisor.liaoiuscslose
and, in some portions, an extremely vulgar attempt at
romance.
must have been in a
Christopher, our brave old Christopher
North,
singular good-
humour when admitting this first of three chapters into
his fastidious Ebony. The criticism on
Fox" is another of those crushing satires upon what is
sure. " Greek Fire and Gunpowder".v
erroneously designated the Cockney schoolisa‘noßafenpoingearutr:ereitahlin:
which Blackwood has
tl thoer reign
morceau which will infinitely
always e-
uriAsherdathdeurridnegsu paced such a pica'
noble work upon the literary
who take an interest in the
wv ehnnt i oflne.manodresctiheanntifiscateisfyaracthose.
progression of science an.d_ars
y notice of Lord Brohugn
aterS
lIL cow'
menses a very admirable of George
number of the Magazioe,
though in it we think the influence of Sir Joseph Banks
as a minor Maceenas is somewhat underated.

Nvocetorceo
ynBly a new covering,li°°
bput' Sa. new character is given
to
remarkableM a Magazine fo
improvement June ; and seeing
upon thatm sny recent
elactetner
is a ri t
numbers, we congratulate the publisher upon the altera-
tion. Since the untimely decease of its first gifted edi-
tor, we regretted to observe a singular falling off in the
ability of his miscellany, and we regretted this the more
as it was intimately connected with his memory, and
with some of his last and noblest liteiary efforts, by as-
sociation. It faded away from a sparkling and humour"
ous collection of papers to a mere hodge-podgeing (to
employ a homely phrase) of indifferent fictions, and
those moreover in a swarm of fragments. Without all
question the present number is the best which has er
peared since cur noble poet Thomas Hood seceded from
the magazine. It is commenced, too, in a very nuns",
manner for a periodical publication—the first contribu-
tion being the first act of a Portuguese tragedy, entitled
Ignez de Castro, from the pen of Mr. J. Jones, the ac:
compli,hed author of "Rural Sonnets." Anything that
may appear under the signature of this gentleman i
sure to enlist our sympathies, and, to a reasonable extent
to propitiate our favour. In speaking thus, inereorg,
we are inflaeuce4 whelly.by a pew of what is trutilf"