of France pre-eminently and peculiarly, and it does not imply a similar constraint elsewhere. We ourselves, at all events, as he would have admitted, are not yet tied to the same necessity. We doubt if we have entered the absorbing current; but at least we are free to repulse advances, if advances should be made, to a crushing Unity of Power. As we hinted before, we venture to differ from what we conceive to have been M. de Tocqueville's conviction, that this process will be inevitably perfected in our own case at some distant but undefined period. We oppose to his theory the augury of M. de Montalembert, that thus far our symptoms are reassuring, that thus far we may retain our motto-" Manet immota fides." Up to this time our institutions have performed their functions-have protected the subject, yet supported the State. We have not forgotten to couple duties with rights, or to discharge the latter generally and substantially. At least we have escaped the taint of any prolonged and systematic class oppression; our love of justice and fair play has, in the main, kept us whole. Our different classes, degrees, and estates are neither as yet confounded nor dissevered; individuals come readily together and combine; only we insist on publicity, and hold "au grand jour la clinique de nos infirmités.” The public action of our citizens is criticised and controlled by public speech, and public writing; and public opinion, thus instructed and sifted, organically passes into public law. So far order is reconciled to progress, and we have preserved our liberties without enfeebling our government, and, what is better, without impelling it in a wrong direction. As yet our aristocracy leads us, and leads because it is worthy to lead, because it is powerful yet liberal, territorial yet popular, wealthy and yet unsordid in its aspirations, because it is socially welded and graduated, and yet of limits happily indefinite, and because, especially in these latter days, it has obtained an advantage, which until laws and learning, arts and commerce die, we do not

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perceive that it can easily lose-the consciousness of its ever increasing obligations. And if our aristocracy could lose this talisman of safety, if from this, or any other cause hidden in the inscrutable future, it should fall hopelessly like that of France, and the institutions of which it is the key-stone should crumble away, there still remain the habits to which we have been trained under its guidance, and the tendencies of race to which they correspond-the Anglo-Saxon traditions of self-government and self-reliance, sanctioned by ten centuries, and witnessed by two hemispheres, with or without the sceptre and the coronet. We see no reason in the nature of things why this tradition should pass

away.

If we rested our confidence on the existence of these guarantees in our own case, we should have some countenance from M. de Tocqueville himself, who has drawn a picture of the French people which is marvellous in its distinctive features, and which may well account for much of their peculiar history. We can scarcely forbear quoting this brilliant passage, so admirably translated that we are unconscious of a translator. But we do not wish to ascribe to race more than its fair value in securing advantages, which in time to come may be more widely disseminated. We still conceive it possible that by slow degrees, and after many trials and partial disappointments, the experience of one great leading nation may be made available to many others; and we rest on that power of enlarged comparison, which is scarcely older than Vico or Montesquieu, and which produces fruits, without limits to their increase. In other words, against the temporary tendency to replace mankind in a state of tutelage, we recur to the fact we have before remarked in its more advanced but sectional phase; and against the present proneness to despotism we pit the growing consciousness of the civilised world. Test the growth of enlightenment by lapsing centuries, and it must be allowed to be scarcely possible that we

could repeat in the nineteenth the mistakes of the eighteenth. We neither observe the same self-confidence on the part of despots, nor an equal abandonment to illusions on the part of nations. It is obvious that we can neither cherish the same hopes nor encounter the same disappointments to an equal degree; and when, as recently, such hopes were welcomed back by the less enlightened classes, we have seen the mind and the force of Europe almost instantly combine, to check the folly and to rectify the balance. The reaction itself, mitigated as it was, is not to be estimated at the extreme limits of its recoil, for Europe is beginning to recover from its apprehensions. And in the meantime its thinkers, even those of France, are sedulously fulfilling their admonitory functions. They are consciously aiding the continued movement, though excluded from the sphere of their former activity. And were they silent, France itself could hardly cease to remember that, for the greater portion of the present century, it has enjoyed a modified form of Constitutional Government. And to the consciousness of France, thus fully enlightened, we may add that of its ruler, as enlightened also. M. Guizot has remarked of the First Napoleon that, notwithstanding his prejudice against the Ideologues, he resuscitated the Academy, and so did more and better than he intended. "How fortunate," says he, "is the shortsightedness of these formidable masters of the world, the very grandeur of whose genius makes them sometimes forgetful of the selfishness of their passions.' We conceive that we have better grounds of confidence now than a shortsighted policy, dependent on events. The possessor of absolute power, like the rest of mankind, must participate in the experience that such power is unstable, in proportion as it is uncontrolled and unassisted; while in the present case he may learn from the story of his own house, that it inevitably tends to exhaustion through excess, and that the best security for its transmission is a timely compromise with freedom.

To all appearance, if we may judge from recent concessions, Louis Napoleon himself has learned this lesson, and the limits of his confidence may be inferred from his conciliatory acts.

REVOLUTIONS IN PROGRESS AND

PROSPECT-1862.

Revolutions and Commotions.-Grounds of Confidence as to the Consequences. -In America the Secession Movement has improved the prospects of the Slave. Not conclusive as to Federalism or Democracy.-The Separation of two distinct Nations.—Advantages to them and to other Powers.—The growth of an overwhelming Empire in the West precluded.-The Movement of certain Races in Europe somewhat analogous.-The Question of the Nationalities, plus the Reformation and the Revolution of 1789.-The Partitions of Poland and the Treaties of 1815.-The French Emperor only subsidiary.-The Treaties of 1815 confused in principle, transitory, and oppressive.-Sustained by Aggressions, yet subjected to Infringements.— England's Share in them defensible, but their Failure more and more manifest.-Effect of Railways.-Germany and Italy. -Neutrality both the Policy and Duty of England.

IF our political progress up to this date is a fact, the result of certain historic laws, which govern political action in a permanent sense, it follows that we ought to find assurance of this fact at the latest stage at which it is possible to carry to the account historical data. The world at this very moment is passing through a phase of extraordinary perturbation in both of its hemispheres. The changes through which it is passing, and the status to which it tends, involve the confutation of some settled convictions and the mortification of some cherished hopes. We see revolutions for a time ascendant, and the world in a sense at the mercy of events. Are we right, therefore, in retaining our original confidence, that nothing now can compromise the principles on which we rely for our steady advancement,-that nothing now can dissipate the state system, within which, as a whole, we see them