was not only to raise the first standing army in Europe, and to give a fatal blow to the feudal aristocracy, by substituting troops regularly raised and supported, for the tumultuary and ill-disciplined levies of the feudal militia, but it placed the king above the law, and made his will absolute.

When, therefore, Louis XIV., several centuries later, made his well known declaration, L'Etat c'est moi, it was not then a bold assertion of a contested right, but it was an incontrovertible truth, and his subjects had been trained to acquiesce in the boast without a murmur. Louis, after the death of Louvois, possessed an army trained up to implicit obedience to his commands, and such as had not been seen since the formation of the modern kingdoms of Europe. Taxes were imposed by his simple edict, and sternly collected by his officers, no matter what might be the amount or the purpose for which they were raised. The nobility were attracted to his splendid court, or incorporated in his army, and were made equally dependent on his favour. The clergy was as submissive as the nobility, the parliaments were silent, and the tiers etat or commons were trodden under foot. We are indebted to our author for some extracts, written by Louis's own hand, in his "Memoires Historique," which will illustrate that monarch's own view of the extent of his powers. They were addressed to the Dauphin, and contained a series of instructions for his grandson, whenever he should be called to wear the crown of France.

"It is the will of God," writes Louis, "who has given kings to man, that they should be revered as his vicegerents, he having reserved to himself alone the right to scrutinize their conduct.' 'It is the will of God that every subject should yield to his sovereign implicit obedience." 'The worst calamity which can befall one of our rank is to be reduced to that subjection in which the monarch is obliged to receive the law from the people.' 'It is the essential vice of the English monarchy that the king can make no extraordinary levies of men or money, without the consent of Parliament, nor convene the Parliament, without impairing his own authority.' 'All property within our realm belongs to us, in virtue of the same title. The funds actually deposited in our treasury, the funds in the hands of revenue officers, and the funds which we allow our people to employ in their various occupations, are all equally subject to our control.' 'Be assured that kings are absolute lords, who

may fully and freely dispose of all the property in the possession either of churchmen or laymen, though they are bound always to employ it as faithful stewards.' 'Since the lives of his subjects belong to the prince, he is obliged to be solicitous for the preservation of them.' The first basis of all other reforms was the rendering my own will property absolute."" (Lecture XXIII., pp. 655–6.)

We have thus rapidly traced the history of monarchy in England and France, and shown, that while the monarchical principle progressively became weaker in England, until it came to be a mere nominal sovereignty, in France it gradually increased, from the smallest beginnings, until it absorbed at length all the other powers in the State. How, it may be asked, did those results take place? The question, we think, may be answered as satisfactorily as such an inquiry admits of, by placing, as we propose to do, the progress of opinions and events in the two countries, in a point of view no less striking than the one we have already made.

In England, there was no period of her history-unless at that time when everything was compressed by the iron hands of the first Norman kings-when some assembly of the people was not looked upon, either for deliberation or legislation, as a counterpoise to the influence of the king, or as some check upon his assumption of undelegated authority. From the Wittema-gemote, or assembly of wise men in the Saxon times, to the middle of the thirteenth century, when knights, citizens and burgesses were first summoned to Parliament-although we are left in a great measure to conjecture as to their periods of meeting, the forms of their deliberations, or the extent of their jurisdiction-some assembly, however weak might have been its influence, however limited its means of counterbalancing the power of the king, or however uncertain its periods of meeting, was regarded with veneration for its antiquity, and with hope as a means of protecting the public liberty. From the period last mentioned, that is, when the Earl of Leicester, in the name of Prince Edward, in the year 1265, invited the commons to take part in the political affairs of the nation, the Legislature became the great centre of the hopes of the English people, and the trusted depository of their powers. Its progress in the assumption of legislative power was rapid, and there are few Englishmen who are not prepared to acquiesce in the

somewhat inflated eulogy of Sir Edward Coke, pronounced even in his own times, on that great body: Si antiquitatem, spectes, est vetustissima, si dignitatem, est honorátissima; si jurisdictionem, est capacissima. But whatever may have been the extent of its jurisdiction at that time, it became unlimited at the revolution, when the British Legislature stripped the king of every substantial power, except that of convoking and dissolving the Parliament, and the

veto.

In the history of France, there was nothing analagous to all this. We have been able to find no recognizable trace of an attempt to establish any assembly, aristocratic or popular, as a means of protecting the public liberty from the usurpations and tyranny of the crown. Such an institution does not appear to have been conceived by the French mind. We do not think worthy of mention, in this connection, the councils or assemblies held by the head of a family, or perhaps by the possessor of a fief, in early times, shortly after the invasion of the Franks, for they led to no result. Nor do we think that the meetings of the States-General afford any indication of a disposition on the part of the French people to seize upon a great popular element like that, and protect themselves through it, from the constantly increasing influence of the throne. On the contrary, it presents to our mind the strongest argument against the supposition. The States-General were convoked at irregular intervals, from the earliest periods of French history, and were supposed to possess extraordinary powers-they met frequently under weak and needy, as well as under active and powerful monarchsthey duly presented a list of grievances for the redress of the throne, often urged in impressive and eloquent language, and they exercised the right of imposing taxes; but they made no systematic attempt, sustained by the three orders, to establish their own power, and turn it to profitable account for both king and people, by fixing the periods and places of their meetings, by forming rules for the government of their deliberations, by making their grants of money follow the redress of grievances, and, like the English Commons, purchase from the necessities of the monarch, the concessions which they could not obtain from his fears. Nothing like this was ever done. The States-General were convoked by the king, whenever he NEW SERIES, VOL. VI.-No. 12.

30

required their advice or aid, and at whatsoever place he might select-the list of grievances was decently read and commonly answered, if noticed at all, after the dissolution of the assembly; and such was the discredit into which that great institution fell, from the fears of the king and the contempt of the people, that when it was called in 1789, it was after an interval of one hundred and seventyfive years.

From the contrast we have made, and the history of the government of France to the present time, we may reasonably infer what the future is likely to be. That history may be presented in a few words. A limited monarchy, gradually absorbing in itself all power, until it becomes absolute. That despotism is overturned by a revolution, which, after a fearful period of anarchy and terror, is succeeded by an empire, which restores the despotism of the old monarchy. The empire, after changing in a great measure the face of Europe, is overturned by foreign arms, and the ancient régime, with the old race of kings, is restored. The last is again subverted, and a constitutional monarchy substituted in its stead. The constitutional monarchy becomes, in process of time, a strongly centralized government, and that in turn overthrown and replaced by a short-lived and fanciful reign of "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity," and France now claims a government, republican in name, with a chief under the soft appellation of President, but who maintains order and suppresses insurrection with an army of nearly half a million of men.

The destiny of France seems an alternation between despotism and revolution. Would that we could anticipate, for that great country, a better fate.

Our author deprecates criticism, by informing us in his dedicatory letter, that

"The lectures, which in accordance with that announcement, I then proceeded to deliver, and which I now publish, constitute neither a history, nor a series of historical treatises, but merely a class or lecture book for the use of the students of our University. I entirely disclaim for them any more ambitious character. I have entertained no higher design than that of laying before my pupils what I suppose to be an accurate summary of the actual state of a particular branch of the science I have to teach. I have not undertaken to enlarge the limits of that science. I have not passed over, nor have I thought myself at liberty to pass over in silence, any

Of

material fact, or any important consideration, merely because it may have been adduced by some, or repeated by many before me. those who may turn over these pages, not a few may perhaps, therefore, find in them no material addition to their antecedent stock of knowledge; but to those whom I have undertaken to instruct, and for whom alone I have written, I have good reason to believe that a very large part of what they will find in this volume will have the attraction of novelty." (pp. 10, 11.)

We think our author has fully discharged the task he assigned himself, and we commend the work to our readers with the estimate which he has placed on his own labours.

We cannot conclude this article, without alluding to an unwarrantable liberty, which certain American publishers take of changing the orthography of the English works, which they republish. It is true, that in our censure we may be shooting in the dark, as to the publishers of the volume before us, for we have no means of collating the English edition with the American reprint, but we cannot believe that an English gentleman, educated at Cambridge, would have spelled "plough," "plow," or "moulded," "molded," or "defence," "defense," and in like manner of other words. This practice is to us a serious evil. We declined several years ago to purchase a copy of an English work, re-published in this country, for the same cause, choosing to wait for some time and get a copy of an inferior edition, but in which the original spelling of the author had been retained. We have been accustomed to the language of Milton and Addison, and Johnson and Walker, and we are not willing to see it changed for the Americanized English of Noah Webster, or any one else. We know no better rule on this subject than

the one laid down by Horace,

Usus,

Quem penès arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi.