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in the government. That immense movement which has been communicated to every country, and agitates all their deepest recesses-which is incessantly inciting every class and every individual to think, to desire, to claim, to act, to employ his activity in every direction-this movement will not be stopped. It is a fact in which we must acquiesce, whether it pleases or displeases us, whether it awakens our fears or excites our hopes. But though we cannot extinguish this movement we can guide and govern it." Here we supposed that Mons. Guizot was at last coming to the point, and that we were to have some views, or some pregnant and statesmanlike suggestions, worthy of the author of "The History of Civilization," and of the late prime minister of the ex-king of France. But we are merely told, as respects "that immense movement, which has been communicated to every country, and agitates all their deepest recesses," that "if it is not guided and governed it will throw back the whole current of civilization, and will be the opprobrium as well as the curse of humanity! Democracy, to be guided and governed, must form a considerable ingredient in the State; but it must not be the sole one:-it must be strong enough to climb itself, but never to pull down others; it must find issues and encounter barriers on every side. Let all the conservative elements of France unite all their efforts, let them keep constant and incessant watch, that the rising tide of democracy may always find safe channels and indestructible barriers." These are certainly all undeniable positions; but we do not see in what respect it will enlighten the rulers of France, or aid them to govern such mauvais sujets as they have to manage and control, to be told that "incessant watch must be kept, to prevent the rising tide of democracy from overleaping its prescribed barriers." That "if the conservative elements of French society know how (aye, there is the rub,) to combine and to form a united body, if" (much virtue in if, as the clown says in Shakspeare,) "if the party spirit which prevails among them shall give way to a large and enlightened spirit, then France, and the democracy of France, are saved! If the conservative elements remain disunited and disorganized, democracy will destroy France, and will perish under the ruins she has made."

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The reviewer of the work in the Southern Quarterly sums up pretty correctly the amount of information and of the political lessons to be derived from it, in the following brief and condensed sentence. "The process for rendering democracy innocuous-for soothing and reconciling the conflicts of parties-for making government stable in spite of them, and for securing to the seperate interests of law, labor, commerce and art, all that they have a right to claim-are unapparent in these pages; the substance of which runs simply, that, unless the French people become pacific, there is no possible hope for peace in France." If the problem be how to govern democracy-its solution is perhaps not quite so difficult as Mons. Guizot seems to consider, and represents it to be; though the subject is certainly a somewhat knotty one, and requires to be elabo rately discussed in order to be correctly understood. The error, then, it appears to us, into which modern legislators, and particularly those of France, have generally fallen, or are most prone to commit, is that of looking only to the immediate political evils and oppressions which it has been the lot of the people in most of the countries in Europe to suffer for so many ages, under the prevailing forms of government, and seeking to remove and extripate these evils, and guard against their recurrence, chiefly by the mere mechanical expedients of enlarging "the area of liberty" and so paring down the claws of the imperial lion of power, as to render him nearly as harmless as his representative in the tragedy comical, and comical tragedy, got up by Bottom and his comrades for the amusement of the Duke of Athens and his court. For, as the first movements in most revolutions are always, either remotely or directly, produced by political abuses and civil oppressions, the remedies for these have naturally enough been supposed to consist in counteracting tyranny by all possible means, or in restraining power and protecting individual freedom by every check that can be placed upon the one, and every safeguard that can be thrown around the other. This tendency of the people, as well as of legislators, thus to pass from one extreme to the other, necessarily led to the error which we have already pointed out, as occurring so prominently in the French constitutions which we have been noticing, and from which our own is not free; (except in the case of the Southern States, whose representation is

based upon slaves) that of giving precedence to liberty, and the modern notions which have been broached upon the subject of popular rights; not only over property, but over the still juster and higher claims of genius, virtue, and merit, and even of patriotism and public service. Confining their attention almost exclusively to the mere mechanism of government, as a political institution, modern lawgivers, particularly those of France, have in general bestowed but little study on the kindred subject of society, or on that wonderful and self-framed social system-which independently of the political institutions by which it may be either temporarily or permanently governed, still presents the same general features, or ever disposes itself, in the same geological order, if we may be allowed the expression, of superior and inferior strata, or of ranks, professions, and mechanical occupations, under the operation of laws as invariable as those which regulate the process of crystallization, and as unchangeable as human nature itself. It will be found, then, or we think we shall show, that in proportion as these natural arrangements, and originally harmonious relations of the social system, are disregarded or unwisely interfered with, in the institutions devised for its government, or in vain attempts to establish an artificial equality, by forcibly merging all classes into one, and investing this inorganic mass with the political sovereignty, or with the supreme power: in the same proportion, we say, will such institutions become the prey of discord, faction, and endless civil commotions, and prove imperfect, unstable and unlasting. We should, perhaps, have earlier premised that our remarks are confined, and will continue to be confined, exclusively to the political experiments made, and still making in Europe, and to the forms of society existing there, which have, for ages past, been based upon the distinction of birth, of rank and of wealth-which, however aristocratic they may be, cannot be safely done away with in a day, or by the summary process of substituting for them the principles of equality, popular sovereignty, and democratic liberty. For the people, in every country of modern Europe, still constitute, as they did of old, in Greece and Rome, a class, and not the whole body of citizens, who form the political entity called the nation, which, though it may be composed of a homogeneous race, never forms a homogeneous mass, but ever

bears, even in a democracy, the traces of the distinctions which birth, talents and wealth naturally create, and of which, therefore, as we have already said, the obscure, features, like the designs on an abraded or half-worn coin may always be discerned and plainly recognized. Hence though the terms are generally considered as convertible; the people do not constitute the nation, though the nation necessarily includes the people along with the other classes. of which it is collectively composed. A pernicious confusion of ideas, and much detriment to the cause of reform and true liberty, has thus been occasioned by the interchangeable use of these terms, so common with the revolutionists and experiment-mongers of Europe, who regard or treat every movement of the class of the people against the other orders of the State who, in the present condition of society in that quarter of the world, are always numerous, potent and influential as a national demonstration, which it is therefore little less than treason to oppose, and which justly stamps those who resist it as the enemies of liberty and progress, and of the human race. In England, alone, the people have been content, as were the free plebs of Rome, with a share of the sovereign power, and a potential voice in the councils of the nation. It is there only that a wise regard was paid, in framing the constitution, to the previously existing condition and natural order of society, so that the distinctions which wealth necesarily gives rise to, wherever property is protected, and those which birth, talents, and conspicuous public services, must also always create, have been preserved, and a stable system of government established, which like one of her own first rates, works easily in the light breezes of peaceful seasons, or as easily outrides the storm, and has never drifted from its moorings in the tempests which, for the last half century, have swept over, and still continue to desolate unhappy Europe. It is only in this country, that the people really form, or can be said to form, the body of the nation, as none of those invidious social distinctions which prevail in Europe had either time to grow up during the short period that we remained colonists, or were ever introduced the mass of the earlier settlers, having been all off sets from the middle and industrious classes, and not from the upper, or aristocratic orders of the different coun

tries from which they came. An expansion was thus given, and a national character imparted to the class of the people, which it never attains except in colonial countries, where the usual developments of society are anticipated, where the social distinctions established among original nations, by the slow elapse of ages, by the accumulations of wealth in particular houses or families, the encroachments of the higher orders on the privileges of the lower, or the changes and innovations effected by the conquests or intestine struggles and commotions have not taken place, or are deferred until the final filling up of all the public lands, and their gradual subdivisions into small properties, which are soon absorbed by the rich, and consolidated into large estates, prepares the way, by giving an undue preponderance to this class of the proprietors, for the introduction of a landed aristocracy, such as that which now exists in England, and which has gradually introduced a body of servile tenantry, in the place of that noble race of yeomen, who once formed the strength, the glory, and the boast of the nation.* Though the error was perhaps a national one, the revolutionists of Europe turned their eyes in the wrong direction, and committed a fatal mistake in fixing them so exclusively as they have done, on the example of the United States; instead of rather guiding themselves by the safer precedents afforded them in the history of those countries where society is based on principles wholly different from those which prevail, and have taken root in America. The attempt to imitate us, and thus to take what seemed to be the shortest course to the object of their ambition and aspirations, or to possess themselves, by the summary process of revolution, of the liberty and political blessings which we had acquired by flying from, instead of contending with tyranny, and which we had merely to defend from their invading armies

This process can only be arrested by or prevented by abolishing the law of entails in the case of large estates (the amount is of course a matter of mere detail) but continuing it among small proprietors, or those who labor their farms with their own hands: as this would tend to preserve and perpetuate a race of hardy and independent yeomen; while it would be attended with no injustice to younger sons, who in having to adopt other occupations, would not have to work harder, and would have more chances of growing rich than the elder branches, who would be confined to a toilsome and slowly-remunerating pursuit.

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