Lords, old as I am, that I shall see the question brought to an issue, and fairly tried be tween the people and government.

In an argument on Parliamentary Privilege, he says:

The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake, the wind may blow through it, the storm may enter, the rain may enter-but the King of England cannot enter! All his force dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement.

"These examples," says Brougham, "may serve to convey a pretty accurate idea of the peculiar vein of eloquence which distinguished this great man's speeches. It was of the very highest order; vehement, fiery, close to the subject, concise, sometimes eminently, even boldly figurative; it was original and surprising, yet quite natural. To call it argument would be an abuse of terms; but it had always a sufficient foundation in reason to avoid any appearance of inconsistency or error, or wandering from the point."

It cannot be denied that Chatham was deficient in some of the requisites we have desiderated in the successfully ambitious man. He had no compromise about him. He was commanding, imperious, and seldom used conciliation. He walked straight forward to his object, despising and overthrowing all obstacles, and yet, notwithstanding his vehemence, his political life was unstained by any violent act of authority. For Chatham was one of nature's autocrats, to whom people yielded by instinct. It was not necessary for him to persuade when he could command, nor to strain his legal authority when there was no opposition to his wishes.

Burke, Pitt, Fox, have been drawn by the masters of every school, and we are thus acquainted with their minutest lineaments seen under all varieties of light. Yet let us not through this familiarity, deprive these great men of the high consideration to which they are entitled. And to keep us from any such error, let us simply ask ourselves what statesmen since their death have ap proached, or even equalled them?

Who among those who since their time have guided the destinies of England, with the solitary exception of Wellington, have carried captive in their career the most distinguished of their contemporaries? With the one exception, England has had no natural leaders since. The days of allegiance to uncrowned merit are gone, not because there is any want of willing subjects, but because the dynasty of the kings by right divine has disappeared. Party men now are kept together purely by party ties; the spirit of clique has seized on the vacant throne of genius. Political adhesion now depends either on connection by marriage, or on the natural attraction inherent in the dispensers of patronage for the time being; and the most obsequious of political adherents feels in his inner nature a protest in favour of his own independence-a tacit caveat that his obedience is not to be construed into an admission of any natural right to command in the party obeyed, and that the fact of the one ruling and the other obeying is merely an acci dent.

We

But it is not alone in politics that this want of the Koenig is felt. feel the void everywhere in society. There is no one to look up to. No one whom if undressed, literally and metaphorically, we would see any propriety in obeying. This arises not so much from the intellectual mediocrity of the age as from its moral degradation. Our aristocracy have lost much of their nobility. Gentlemanly feeling is dying awaythe old way of estimating things which was somewhat confused and hazy, because viewed through the light of a hundred emotions of the heart, undefined in their limits and fluctuating in their obligations with all the varieties of character among individual men-a grand fine Turner painting, after all-has given place to a precise, definite system by which the value of every one, human and divine, can be ascertained within a hundred pounds. Adhesion to statesman A, will give me a probable chance of a post worth £300 per annum; and adhesion to B, will give me a chance of £600 per annum, therefore I will adhere to B. I have no definite conviction on the question which of

their principles is best for the country; there is a good deal to be said on both sides, and individually they are both very 66 respectable" men; but I have the chance of getting twice as much from B as from A, and it is a duty I owe to my family and to myself, to stand by her Majesty's Government, to whom God be gracious, and send a speedy appreciation of my merits, else I may feel it my duty to turn a patriot.

But to return to our three states

men.

It is a common mistake among those who have not read Burke's works, to call him a mere theorist, but he was the most cautious and practical of statesmen, thoroughly aware of the intense action and reaction in human affairs, and therefore never attempting to carry principles to their extreme consequences. He knew that constitutions grew, and could not be spun out of logic; and so he laboured rather to ameliorate than to change to modify than to subvert. In fact, the political ideas he propounded were not unlike those of the "Idée Napoleonienne," only expressed in richer language, and modified by their adaptation to a constitutional system of government. He had the same preference as the two Napoleons for a perfect machine, with as few clogs or useless wheels as may be; but Burke's machine behoved to go by wind, by water, or by steam, and sometimes to stand still; whereas the engine of the Bonapartes was constructed with a view to perpetual motion under the influence of steam only, and that always at high pressure.

66

Brougham thinks Burke exaggerated the mischiefs to be apprehended from the French revolution. He might, he says, have foreseen the possibility of a new, orderly, and profitable government" rising out of the ruins of the Republic. "All this we now see clearly enough," he says, "having survived Mr. Burke forty years." We who have survived another eighteen years since Brougham made this remark, have seen this "new, orderly, and profitable government" disappear from the face of the earth, and another government, very orderly, though somewhat like a despotism, occupy its place. Burke has not yet been proved to have been wrong.

The career of this distinguished statesman corroborates our remarks as to the qualifications necessary to gain the prizes of ambition. Burke's mind was of the meditative cast, and he was far too honest to make use of coups d'etat to further his advancement, while, great man though he was, he had not the majesty of Chatham to enable him to rise without them. The consequence was, that his career as a statesman, so far as his personal advancement was concerned, was a failure.

Brougham gives a discriminating, and of course an incongruous character of Fox. With such capacities to rise in his higher nature, and such facility of sinking in his lower nature, no one presents so puzzling a problem as Fox, if we attempt a moral estimate of his character. He seems, while we contemplate him, to undergo a perpetual metempsychosis. At one time he is Cato, and again he is Mephistopheles. We see him now as Socrates, scattering maxims of wisdom and morality; the morrow he is the ruined gambler, not unfrequently in a state of intoxication. Then another change comes over him : he goes to the House, and declaims in majestic terms on the rights of mankind, and his audience feel themselves elevated in moral tone as they listen to him; but next day there is a subscription to pay his gambling debts, which he accepts without hesitation. A great patriot, he yet seemed to wish for the triumph of Napoleon over his country, and he thwarted Pitt in his attempt to check the aggrandisement of Russia. Continually declaiming in favour of liberty, and denouncing the ministry as embarked in a conspiracy against the constitution, he retired with his party from the House of Commons, where it was his duty to watch over that very constitution, and defend it from all attacks.

Pitt wasa much simpler character; cold, able, statuesque, draping himself in a proud self-respect which rendered him incapable of any meanness, or of anything tending to abate the dignity of his public life; he was a statesman modelled on the schoolboy notions of the patriot of Greece or Rome: equally as perfect, uncorruptible, and uncompromising, and as little capable of sympathising with the infirmities and weaknesses of ordinary men,

We may say of Pitt that we admire and respect but do not love him, though no one now can hate him. Of Fox again we must say that we respect him not at all, but we admire the versatility of his capacious intellect, and find it impossible not to love his genial, erring, and we must add unprincipled nature. The former had most of the qualities which conduce to political power, but wanted conciliation; with which, however, he could dispense, inheriting as he did much of the natural right to command, so largely possessed by his father. Fox had what Pitt wanted; no one made friends so easily, but he had one defect which was fatal to his success as an ambitious man-he could not be trusted.

Brougham's sketch of Lord Melville is too racy to be omitted, though the Scotch statesman is hardly entitled to rank with those whose portraits we have been examining. The secret of his power, says Brougham, was—

No doubt owing, partly to the unhesitating and unqualified determination which regulated his conduct of devoting his whole patronage to the support of his party, and to the extent of that patronage, from his being so long minister of India, as well as having the whole Scotch preferment at his absolute disposal; but it was also in part owing to the engaging qualities of the man-a steady, determined friend, who only stood the faster by those who wanted him the more; nay, who even in their errors or their faults would not give up his adherents. An agrecable companion, from the joyous hilarity of his manners, void of all affectation, all pride, all pretension; a kind and affectionate man in "the relations of private life." That such a man should, for so many years, have disposed of the votes of nearly all the Scotch commoners and peers, was the less to be wondered at when it is kept in view that at that time there was no doubt of the ministry's stability; the political sky was clear and settled to the very verge of the horizon; there was nothing to disturb the hearts of anxious mortals. The wary and pensive Scot felt sure of his election, if he had but kept by the true faith, and his path lay straight before him.

"The path of righteous devotion, leading unto a blessed preferment." But suddenly the government changed and Pitt went out.

It was, in truth, a crisis to try men's souls. For a while all was uncertainty and conster

But

The

nation, all were seen fluttering about like birds in an eclipse or a thunderstorm; no man could tell whom he might trust-nay, worse still, no man could tell of whom he could ask anything. It was hard to say, not who were in office, but who were likely to remain in office. Our countrymen were in dismay and destruction. It might truly be said they knew not which way to look or whither to turn. such a crisis was too sharp to last, it passed away, and then was to be seen a proof of Mr. Dundas's power amongst us, which transcended all expectation and almost surpassed belief, if, indeed, it is not rather to be viewed as an evidence of the acute foresight, the political second sight of the Scottish nation. trusty band in both houses actually were found adhering to him against the existing government-nay, he held the proxies of many Scottish peers in open opposition! might his colleague exclaim to the hapless Addington, in sach unheard of troubles, "Doctor, the Thanes fly from us." When the very Scotch peers wavered, and when the Grampian hills might next be expected to move about, it was time to think that the end of all things was at hand, and the return of Pitt and security and patronage and Dundas speedily ensued, to bless old Scotland, and reward her providence or her fidelity, her attachment at once to her patron and to herself.

Well

If we had space, we would extract Brougham's sketch of Lord Eldon, a man in all respects equipped with those qualities essential to political

success.

The Judge, so prone to doubt that he could hardly bring his mind to decide, was, in all that practically concerned his party or himself, as ready to take a line and to follow it with determination of purpose as the least ingenious of ordinary statesmen. He, whose fears very much resembled his conscientious scruples, of which no man spoke more or felt less; he was about as often the slave of them as the Indian is of his deformed little gods, of which he makes much and then breaks them to pieces or casts them into the fire. Who, be the act mild or harsh, moderate or violent, sanctioned by the law and constitution or an open outrage upon both, was heard, indeed, to wail and to groan much of painful necessity-often vowed to God-spoke largely of consciencecomplained bitterly of a hard lot; but the paramount sense of duty overcame all other feelings; and with wailing and with tears, beating his breast and only rot tearing his hair, he did, in the twinkling of an eye, the act which unexpectedly discomfited his adversaries and secured his own power for ever.

We have given ample specimens of the style of Lord Brougham, chiefly on

account of the merit of the extracts and their suitability to our object, but also because his style is eminently suggestive of the man. It is quite a natural style, the offspring of his own sagacious, direct, and powerful mind. Deficient in ornament, and even indicating a want of imagination, it is by no means bald, being impregnated throughout by close cogent reasoning, which often, in its concentration, rises to Demosthenic eloquence. The solitary object it aims at is to make an impression, to carry the object in hand, to hit the nail right on the head. That done, there is no finishing or polishing, the argument is clenched, and it is no slight logical force which will unfasten it. But his merits as an author are not to be estimated by particular passages, but by the method of treatment of his subject as a whole. He might, had he so chosen, have given more finish and ornament to his sentences, but he might thereby have sacrificed force to elegance--he might have secured the admiration of the critic and failed to convince the reader. In our humble opinion, we think he was right to avoid such risks. Brougham was substantially a man of action, and only by accident, as it were, a man of let

ters; and to have made this accident anything else than a mere clothing to the substance, would have been incongruous. But by not being led astray in this way by literary ambition, it has so happened he has achieved a literary success. His style is a firstclass style of its kind, the style of the man of business and ambition, the fit organ for those who attempt to compel fortune to their service, who feel that they have a right to be heard and obeyed. As a master, therefore, of a real genuine style, fitted for peculiar purposes, we prophecy that Lord Brougham will be popular as an author, long after the works of those who, at present, enjoy a greater literary reputation shall have been laid aside as unnatural and affected.

For a similar reason we expect that the reputation of Lord Brougham, as a statesman, will increase with time, and that posterity will assign him a higher rank among his contemporaries than that which he at present occupies; for we hold him to be a real genuine man, acting and speaking from the dictates of a strong, plain, practical mind, without fear, without adulation, and, as the greatest of all merits in the present day, without affectation.

ABOUT five miles from the city of Tours, in the far-famed valley of the Loire, there stands a structure of modern date and of unobtrusive aspect, towards which many a tourist, impelled by mere curiosity, and many an enlightened philanthropist, actuated by a loftier motive, have of late been seen to direct their footsteps:-we allude to the well-known school of Mettray, established for the reception and treatment of male juvenile delinquents.

It is our design in this article to give a brief account of the origin and progress of this institution, and of its results; to notice such establishments of the same kind as have been founded in this kingdom, in other parts of the continent of Europe, and in America; to set forth the peculiar character and necessities of those for whom such institutions are believed to be adapted; and to state such objections as have, from time to time, and more especially of late, been urged against them.

In 1810 the following enactment became a part of the Penal Code of France, of which it constitutes the 66th Article :

When a person accused shall be under sixteen years of age, if he be deemed to have acted sans discerne nent,* he shall be acquitted; but he shall, according to circumstances, be either restored to his family, or taken to a

House of Correction, to be there educated and detained for such a number of years as shall be determined by the judgment, but which shall in no case exceed the period at which he shall have completed his twentieth year.

Various attempts were made to carry the provisions of this Article into effect; but with no other result than this that, as regarded the principal place of confinement for young persons in the metropolitan department, out of every hundred discharged pri soners no fewer than seventy-five were again in the hands of justice in three months! This was a startling discovery. At length, in 1837, the Government appointed a commission to make a personal examination of the transatlantic system of prison discipline; and Frederic Auguste De Metz, a judge of the court of Appeal at Paris, a gentleman well qualified for the task assigned to him, was despatched to the United States. But though he witnessed there a mode of dealing with convicts in general which appeared to be attended with unparalleled success, he felt that the grand problem of effecting a sensible diminution in the floating mass of criminality had yet to be solved, and that the solution could be looked for only in the mode of treating juvenile offenders. It was by mere accident that, about this time, his attention was

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