on irrelevant considerations. Their system, with all its faults, insured the acquisition of a certain considerable competency in administration, before a servant reached an elevation at which he could do much harm. Dundas, though unconsciously, no doubt-for he never in any circumstances exhibited the least aversion to jobbing places-thus preserved an element which at that day, at all events, it was highly desirable to preserve, and which even now eminent publicists think us rash in having discarded.

If it was thus desirable to leave the ordinary patronage in the hands of a special and intermediate body, with peculiar qualifications for knowing the conditions and demands of the country to be governed, it was equally desirable that the main post of all should be bestowed on some one, who should owe a direct allegiance and responsibility to the imperial executive. While enjoying all the benefits of a trained body of advisers, in the servants by whom he was surrounded, he would bring to the administration a mind unembarrassed by special traditions, and free from irregular personal or local preferences. The appointment of this high officer away from the service would have been as possible under Burke's scheme, as it was in that of Dundas.

One more remark remains. In considering the American Revolution, we came across one of the elements which prepared that extraordinary endurance of absolutism, repression, and reaction, which astonishes the reader of English history from the Revolution down to the Reform Bill. The tyrannical ideas which sprung up among all classes during the American War demoralised public opinion. We may find another element in the feeling which gradually arose during the too prolonged trial of Hastings. By the end of the trial the delinquent had not only the court and the clergy on his side-that alliance was natural and unfailing-but the general public opinion of the country. The proceedings had familiarized people with acts and ideas of oppression. It is one of the most significant characteristics of lawlessness that, like the most deadly diseases, it is infectious. India was for many years a chief forcing-house, whence arbitrary notions of the most pestilent sort were transplanted into England. This was only the necessary reaction of an arbitrary and selfish policy-not the least of the evils which such a policy entails.

CHAPTER VI.

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

THE

HE establishment of Catholicism, the Reformation, and the Revolution, mark three great stages through which the mind of Europe has travelled since the decline of the Western Empire.

Each of

these names covers a set of moral and intellectual conceptions, in which are contained the germs of some of the chief social changes, that have transformed Europe from its state in the fourth century, to its state in the nineteenth, and all three of which are still working in the accomplishment of a further and more radical transformation. The history of the process by which one of these systems of belief has gradually been made to give way in the most far-seeing minds to its successor, would be the history of the Renaissance, of the development of speculative philosophy, of the advance of physical science, in a word, of the evolution of ideas in every order of thought which, directly and indirectly, is able to modify man's con

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victions about the relations between himself and all that lies beyond himself. Though each has had a special geographical centre, Catholicism in Italy, the Reformation in Germany, the Revolution in France, the movement has in each case extended with varying strength and in different forms over the rest of the European federation. With a common organization lying in the background of our past history, and with a constant and close communication, it is impossible that powerful progressive elements in one nation should not, with some modifications in their embodiment, exercise an energetic influence over the other members of the same general body.

There is an important distinction in the nature of the exact connexion between the several movements. The Reformation, while adding something to Catholicism in the shape of dogma, and stripping it of much in the matter of discipline, still must be acknowledged to have sprung from the bosom, and to have been tended by the sons, of Catholicism. The Revolution, though deeply indebted to the Protestant armoury for many weapons which helped to clear the way, and to Jansenism, which was Protestant doctrine with Catholic discipline, still arose from springs, and flowed in a channel, of its own. Contrasted with the Revolution,

the Reformation remained of close kith and kin with Catholicism. Again, the order of influence is somewhat different. The Reformation had its roots in spiritual needs and theological diversities, and only led indirectly to momentous political changes. (The Revolution, in its primary aspect almost purely political, only subsequently reveals its profound moral and spiritual bearings. The Reformation, emancipating the minds of those who were ripe for it from heavy spiritual burdens, contributed also, as Holland, England, and America showed, to engender a strong desire for political emancipation. The Revolution, in its earlier stages the offspring of material disorder and the organ of secular reform, soon became a tremendous engine of spiritual regeneration, to whose power even yet the world fails to render perfect justice.

For, above all things, let us never forget that those manifold agencies which are summed up under the name of the Revolution, are still at work. The Treaties of Vienna were not to the Revolution, what the Peace of Westphalia was to the Reformation. Whether we look upon the Revolution merely as the final destroyer of systems of social privilege and spiritual authority, previously all but worn out, or, more than this, as contributing permanent and positive elements to human