removed. Government became more lenient, as domestic danger receded. The suspension of the Constitution ceased, and liberty, founded on the secure basis of order, and a general obedience to the laws, expanded to a degree unprecedented even in the annals of English free dom. There is no period in the history of England when public liberty was so general, and, at the same time, life and property so completely protected, as from 1800 to 1830,-the very period which, it was said, from the arbitrary measures of Mr Pitt, the tranquillity of despotism only could be expected. And thus, at the very time when the people of France, in the vain aspirations after unattainable license and impracticable democracy, had riveted about their necks the chains of Robespierre and Napoleon, the inhabitants of England, under the able and resolute government of Mr Pitt, laid the foundations of, and obtained the highest attainable degree of constitutional freedom: a memorable example of the basis on which alone practicable liberty can be reared, and of the speedy destruction which the principles of democracy bring on the public freedom, which they profess to establish.

To all persons conversant with historical facts, and capable of reflecting with impartiality on public affairs, these two examples were of themselves decisive. But they were not the only ones which were to be presented. England and France were destined to change places in political conduct; instead of the cautious reserve, the steadfast resolution, the conservative principles of their predecessors, the English administration were to exhibit the frenzy of Jacobinical innovation, and the experiment was to be tried, whether a sober temperament, long established habits of freedom, and a general diffusion of property, could render those changes safe which had torn freedom to shreds in the more impassioned population of France. At the same time the French Government changed places with their rivals; a legitimate and constitutional throne was there established, and the experiment was made, whether liberty can with their people flourish and increase on the founda

tion of order and the coercion of democratic ambition. This experiment has been made on the greatest scale in both countries; the result of experience is now complete in all its parts.

Under the constitutional sceptres of Louis and Charles, France made advances in real freedom unprecedented since the days of Clovis. That which she sought for in vain amidst the democratic fervour of the Constituent Assembly, which was drowned in blood by Robespierre, and consumed in fire by Napoleon, was safely and securely obtained under the mild and weak government of the Bourbons. Their rule was distinguished by no extraordinary ability; their councils directed by no remarkable wisdom; but such was the wonderful benefit to freedom which had resulted from the extinction of democratic ambition, and the re-establishment of order by the power of Napoleon, that when his weighty hand was removed, freedom sprung up of itself unaided and secure. All the follies of the old noblesse, all the weakness of the court, could not obliterate the effects of the mortal stroke which Jacobinism had received from the triumph of the Allies. For the first time in its history, France enjoyed fifteen years of real freedom and unexampled prosperity. The press was free; personal liberty secure; general industry protected; amidst the execrations of the Jacobins, and the vituperation of the democracy, the glorious fabric of constitutional liberty was securely reared, and its smiling fields and swelling cities almost made the traveller forget the fiery track of revolution which had so recently crossed the realm.

But the spirit of democratic ambition was struck to the earth, not destroyed. Stunned by the strokes of Wellington and Alexander, overwhelmed in the ruins of Napoleon's throne, it recovered its strength with the next generation on both sides of the Channel. The prospect of constitutional order, of the enjoyment of freedom by all classes, of the protection of property, life, and liberty, by the just balance of the aristocratic and democratic bodies, was too hateful to be endured by the ardent aspirants after democratic tyranny.

The mob were not omnipotent; the industrious everywhere enjoyed their property; personal freedom was safe from Jacobinical arrest; these facts alone were sufficient to excite the indignant fury of the Republican faction throughout the kingdom. Incessantly they laboured to poison and inflame the minds of the rising generation; vehemently they exerted themselves to dis. figure the fair fabric of constitutional freedom, which by the overthrow of their principles had arisen; and at length their efforts were successful. The minds of the people were poisoned; words prevailed over actions; a free government was mistaken for a despotism, under the thick darkness universally spread by the press, the Reign of Terror was forgotten, and at the very time that the republican spirit was prevailing in the legislature over the throne, and the undue prevalence of the democratic principle had become apparent to the eye of reason, the Government was universally held out as a despotism. The illusion prevailed, the throne of Charles X. was destroyed, and France again adventured on the perilous sea of democratic revolution.

vailing efforts, and sick of democratic fervour, relapsed into the tranquillity of despotism: even the debates of the legislature have ceased to be an object of interest, and with the forms of a limited, France has become an absolute, monarchy.

Undeterred by the instructive spectacle, the English Reformers instantly took advantage of the tumult occasioned by the second French Revolution, to revive their long respited but not extinguished pretensions. The times were changed. Pitt and Burke were no longer at the head of affairs, the new generation was widely tinged by the principles of democracy, a fanatical and ambitious administration was placed at the helm, powerful to destroy, weak and powerless to save. The decisive moment had arrived; the last hour of England's greatness had struck. Unable to govern the realm on safe or constitutional principles, threatened with dissolution by the reviving good sense and spirit of the classes whose opinion had hitherto governed the country, they took the frantic and desperate resolution of leaping at once from the strand, and periling themselves and the nation on the impetuous torrent The experiment of Revolution. for the time had the success, and in the end led to the result, which, in every age, from the days of Sylla to those of Cromwell, has attended a similar experiment. For a few months the Government was the most idolized which ever existed; amazed at the spectacle of the weight of the Executive being thrown into the scale of democracy, the people knew no bounds to their adulation, and after a desperate struggle of property and education against power and numbers, the democratic measure was carried, and a revolution effected. What the result is we have fifty times predicted, and the most obdurate may now all see. The nation has been disorganized in all its parts; it has taken fire in the most inflammable quarters from the firebrands so profusely tossed about by Administration during the struggle; the West Indies were first involved in conflagration, Bristol and Nottingham were next delivered over to the flames; and at length Ireland, following faithfully out the in

junctions of its Government "agitate, agitate, agitate"-has become so convulsed, that the Constitution is about to be suspended, martial law established, and under the pressure of stern necessity, a military despotism established.

There never was any thing, therefore, comparable in the history of mankind to the political experience of the last forty years. Twice during that period has France yielded to the voice of the tempter, and embarked on the ocean of innovation, and twice has the speedy result been an absolute and sanguinary military despotism. Once during that period has England steadily resisted the encroachments of democratic ambition, and pursued the path of duty amidst the execrations of the multitude; and her magnanimity has been rewarded by thirty years of freedom, tranquillity, and glory. Once during the same time has France received a government founded on the overthrow of the Jacobin power, and the firm basis of resistance to innovation; and she received in return, on the admission of the Republicans themselves, fifteen years of unexampled liberty, prosperity, and happiness. To complete the picture, England at the close of the era abandoned all her former principles, and yielded to the clamours of democratic ambition; but hardly had the songs of republican triumph ceased, or the lights of revolutionary illumination been extinguished, when from the ruins of constitutional freedom, the stern and relentless spectre of military despotism arose. All this passing before their own eyes will not illuminate the Revolutionists; even their own destruction will not quench their fanaticism; " if they hear not Moses and the Prophets, neither would they be converted though one rose from the dead."

It is because we are, and ever have been, and we trust ever shall be, the firm friends of freedom, the undeviating supporters of constitutional liberty, the supporters of the greatest possible license in thought and language which is consistent with the existence of order or its own duration, that we opposed with such vigour the fatal

democratic innovations which we knew, from the lessons of history, would speedily prove fatal to both. We foresaw and clearly predicted this disastrous result, amidst the tumult of exultation consequent on the passing of the Reform bill. In the article on the "Fall of the Constitution," published nine months ago, it is clearly and emphatically foretold.*

It is because we foresaw, amidst the parade of tri-color flags, and the yells of Jacobin triumph, the court-martial, the lictor's axe, the weeping family surrounding the car of transportation, that we strained every nerve to point out the fatal effects to freedom, which must result from the insane career which was adopted our efforts were unsuccessful; the Jacobin triumph was complete; and the first apostles of freedom are in consequence obliged to introduce an invasion of the constitution, unprecedented since the days of Cromwell.

The reign of every administration during the fervour of democratic triumph must necessarily be short, because the leaders of one party and one year soon become the objects of uncontrolled jealousy to the class immediately below themselves in the progress of the movement. The authors of the French Revolution were swept away in a few years by the ferment which they had created in the nation, and it requires no great stretch of political foresight to predict that the authors of the English Revolution will not be long in sharing the same political fate. But in both cases the authors of these Revolutions remained sufficiently long at the head of affairs, to be compelled to bring forward themselves the measures of coercion, which their extravagant conduct had rendered necessary, and hear their names execrated by the vile and changeable class, for whose elevation they had overturned the ancient constitution of their country. Bailly, the first president of the National Assembly, the author of the "Tennis Court Oath," the first great step in the revolution, was compelled two years after to hoist the red flag, the ensign of martial law, at the Hotel de Ville; and in two years

more, he was beheaded, with that same flag burning over his head, on the Champs de Mars; the scene of his courageous resistance, when too late, to democratic tyranny. Lafayette, the adored commander of the National Guard, whose white plume was for years the signal for unanimous shouts in the streets of Paris, was forced himself to execute martial law on his former supporters; at one discharge he brought down above a hundred Jacobins in the Champs de Mars, and he was in consequence compelled to fly his country into the Austrian lines, and escaped death at the hands of his vindictive adulators only by being shut up for years in the dungeons of Olmutz. Lord Grey and Lord Brougham, the popular leaders of the Reform Bill, who so long struggled to force it upon a reluctant legislature, and wielded the whole power of the prerogative to overthrow the old constitution, are now compelled to bring forward a measure, as they themselves admit, of surpassing severity and despotic character towards Ireland, the very country whose representatives secured the triumph of the great democratic measure, and to try the agitators, roused into fiendlike activity by their blind exertions, by courts-martial. They are in consequence classed by their recent worshippers with Nero and Caligula. May Heaven avert from them and their country those ulterior and unutterable calamities, which the career of Bailly and Lafayette brought on themselves and on France, whose fate they were so often implored to

Do.

Do. Do.

remember, whose steps they sa blindly persevered in pursuing!

The recent act for suspending jury trial, and the Habeas Corpus act, and establishing martial law in Ireland, therefore, is no abandonment of their political principles; no tergiversation or change of measures on the part of Ministers. It is, on the contrary, the natural and unavoidable, though perhaps not the expected or wished for result of those measures, and the agitation which they kept up to pass them. In the political, not less certainly than the moral world, the career of passion and intemperance must lead to suffering and agony; if we would avoid the last deeds of severity, we must shun the first seductive path. The martial law of 1833, followed as necessarily and inevitably from the democratic transports of 1831, as the sword of the Dictator from the fervour of the Gracchi, the rule of Cromwell from the madness of 1642, the despotism of Napoleon from the innovation of 1789, and the state of siege of Marshal Soult from the triumphs of the Barricades.

Thus, since the system of democratic concession began, the number of great crimes, which include only burglaries, arson, houghing cattle, murders, and desperate assaults, has increased fivefold, and at last become so intolerable as to compel a vacillating and Reforming Administration to repeal the Constitution for a time, abolish trial by jury, and

To show how exactly and evidently the utter and unparalleled disorganization of Ireland has arisen from the system of concession to democratic ambition, pursued for the last five years in that country, it is sufficient to refer to the table of the crimes which have occurred in Ireland, as given by Lord Althorp from the official returns, accompanying it merely with the running commentary of the measures adopted at the dictation of the democrats during that eventful period.

establish the odious power of martial law.

It would be a waste of time and patience, after the powerful and statesman-like speech of Sir Robert Peel, and the energetic eloquence of Mr Stanley, to argue upon the necessity, the absolute and uncontrollable necessity of this measure. It is of more importance for those who

regard passing events, as we ever endeavour to do, not as the subject of party contention, but as the great school of political wisdom, to impress the great and momentous truth, that these atrocities, and the absolute necessity of the severe measure which is to repress them, originate solely and exclusively in the supine weakness and insane agitation which, for party purposes, Ministers maintained for years in that unhappy country; first, to force on Catholic Emancipation, and then to carry them through the desperate struggle of the Reform Bill. When the great Agitator was allowed to escape after having pleaded guilty, and rewarded for his exertions by a patent of precedence at the bar; when the mandate went forth from the Castle of Dublin,-" Agitate, agitate, agitate;" when pastoral letters issued from the leader of the Catholic priesthood, hoping-" that the people's resistance to tithes would be as permanent as their love of justice;" and these official and clerical exhortations were addressed to the most impassioned, desperate, and reckless population in Europe, -a people who, as Sir Hussey Vivian declares, never scruple to imbrue their hands in the blood of their fellow-creatures, and were totally and universally incapable of distinguishing between legal and illegal agitation; is it to be wondered at if the people followed the directions of their temporal and spiritual guides, and gave a full vent to those furious passions which mutual exasperation has so long fostered, and the powerful hand of authority alone had repressed.

The learned and able Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, Judge Bushe, has declared, in his charge to the Grand Juries of the Queen's County two years ago, "that the ordinary and regular laws have been found sufficient to put down the various Whiteboy associations which have from time to time existed." This is a most important declaration, coming from so high a quarter, and supported, as every person acquainted with Ireland knows it is, by more than a century's experience. The Committee, however, who sat upon Irish affairs last session of Parliament, have reported, that some additional safe

guards are now necessary, and they accordingly recommended, as we shewed in our last number, the establishment of a fixed Crown Solicitor in each circuit, and other precautionary measures. Ministers were grievously puzzled how to answer the powerful argument which O'Connell founded on this circumstance, and utterly unable to give any answer to the reiterated question, why, before they had recourse to the ultima ratio of force-martial law, and the suspension of the constitution-they did not, in the first instance, try the gentler and more legal remedy of a permanent special commission, and a vigorous applica tion of the existing laws. These remedies, in time past, have sufficed to repress all former disorders, even those which, in 1821, as Mr Barrington, the Crown Solicitor for Munster, declares, were as formidable as those which, when he spoke (July 1832), existed in the Queen's County. It is no wonder they could give no answer to this question, because its answer involves the severest condemnation of their reckless and inflammatory conduct; but we shall anticipate the sober voice of history in answering for them.

Special commissions, and a vigorous application of the common law, were amply sufficient, under all former Governments, who proceeded on Conservative principles, who respected order, and upheld the majesty of the law, to repress the predial or rural disorders of Ireland: those disorders which spring from the unhappy relation of landlord and tenant, and under various names, have disturbed Ireland for the last sixty years. They were, accordingly, as the Chief Justice observes, amply sufficient for the establishment of order under all the former Tory Governments of Ireland, and, except when actual rebellion broke out in 1798, no measure at all approaching to the present ever was thought of. But they are utterly inadequate to repress those far greater and more serious disorders which have arisen from the fatal intermixture of political with predial agitation, which have sprung from the mandates to agitate, issuing from the Castle, and been spread by the universal injunctions to resist legal authority" in the most