political interests of men.

This however is

but the basis, on which rests the peculiar work of the author. These agencies having been established, he proposes to trace them to their effects, as they have operated throughout the world during the long pe riod of thirteen centuries, with the professed design of showing, that all their numerous and various results have composed one harmonious system of political and moral action. This perhaps may be described as the physiology of political history. The whole political world being considered as a combined system, it is proposed to prove that every part has exercised one or more functions correspondent to its own circumstances, and instrumental to the well-being of the whole. In examining the structure of the body of an animal or vegetable, we observe with admiration the various uses, to which its numerous and dissimilar parts are subservient, and the harmony with which they are combined. Why may we

:

not seek for such adaptations in the functions, or the mutual relations, of the great aggregate of nations? That these are very variously circumstanced is certain, so variously indeed, that the lowest of the human race are scarcely more distant from brute animals, than the favoured sons of civilization are exalted above the savage outcasts of humanity and even among those nations which enjoy the refinements of civilized life, we perceive diversity and inequality in all the particulars which constitute their social interests. It may be deemed fanciful to believe that any relations can have really subsisted between parts so heterogeneous; but an opinion thus lightly conceived should not be permitted to influence a determination, in a case in which a regular proof is submitted to the understanding. The question is whether the author has in any degree succeeded in proving that such relations have actually subsisted between them, or rather, as the first attempt

in a work of such magnitude must necessarily be very imperfect, whether he has succeeded in establishing it as a probable conclusion, that such relations may yet be shown to have subsisted. This is a question which can be fairly determined only by a consideration of the details of history stated in these lectures.

Another view has been already intimated, perhaps more illustrative of the philosophical character of the present work. When Newton had discovered that the same power, which brings down a heavy body to the earth, retains the planets and comets in their orbits, controlling through the immensity of space motions of which we are unable to imagine the velocity, he proceeded to apply the same principle to the explanation of the numerous and minute perturbations, which arise from the reciprocal and interfering actions of the several members of the planetary system. Here however his investigations failed; his conclusions founded upon

observed appearances were not conformable to the effects which he endeavoured to explain, nor could they reach to all the complicated and minute combinations of the forces of nature. La Place has since happily pursued a contrary course. Assuming the truth of the theory, which Newton had sufficiently established, he proceeded to consider what disorders might be expected to occur in a system so constituted, and he arrived at conclusions, which agree precisely with the phenomena, and complete the discovery of Newton. Without pretending to any other comparison with these distinguished names, than is necessary to the purpose of illustration, may it not be said, that the exposition of political causes, given in the second lecture, corresponds to the assumption of the theory of gravitation in the argument of La Place, and that, as his treatise was an investigation of the perturbations of the material system, which should flow from such a theory, so is the remainder of the

present work employed in explaining, by the agency of the political causes thus enumerated, the perturbations of the moral order of the world? When, instead of thus beginning with the assumption of acknowledged principles, we survey the various fortunes of the numerous nations of the earth, and endeavour to trace them to their respective causes, we discover among them few vestiges of harmonizing combination; all appears to be, if not fortuitous, at least the workmanship of weak and erring beings, incapable of devising and maintaining any comprehensive plan of action. But when the established principles of political causation shall have been applied to the consi-· deration of all the great changes of modern history, it is hoped that these may present a very different aspect, their very irregularities appearing to be but more complicated examples of the agency of simple and general causes in producing one common result.