its own politics to degenerate into such a mixture of vulgarity and childishness. No nation has produced jurists who have done more to animate the form of law with the spirit of humanity and truth-in none have the guardians of justice bartered it for gold in more shameless or cynical betrayal. No nation has a shorter history-none is more mature. It is the same with the individual and the race. The young American has no childhood, the race has had no youth; new without freshness, old without antiquity. Who would care to forecast the future of a country and a people of which such things must be said?

And yet when criticism has done its worst, and the faults of the American Republic have been most unsparingly exposed, of one thing its history assures us well-that the same patient and unwearied Spirit, who has guided the toilsome march of mankind from its eastern birth-place, and touched with heroic fire the souls of men when there was work for heroes to accomplish, has not forsaken our race in the confused and novel life of its western home. In the great

crises of its destiny America has not yet failed. When brave hearts have been called for to resist and tender hearts to suffer, the courage and the sacrifice have not been called for in vain. The history of America for another hundred years no one would venture to anticipate. It may be that the West will struggle with the East as the North has struggled with the South, not in the like sanguinary conflict, but with equal and more successful determination to be separate. Or it may be that the manifest destiny of the Great Republic will consolidate its rule, and enlarge its dominion, until one law prevails from Panama to Labrador. Yet whatever be the changes of the future, if its citizens are but true to the splendid principles on which their state was founded, and choose, like their "symbol-bird," the clear, upper air of purity and freedom-which nations neither rise to without struggle. nor fall from without death-then the political and social evolution of the new world may still guide the old towards finer issues of beneficence and peace.

RIVAROL, Malouet, Gouverneur Morris, and Mallet du Pan, these are the four men whom M. Taine has distinguished as the most competent observers of the French Revolution. Of these four, who are alike in having been led from the liberal point of view to condemnation of the Revolution, the last two, from the independence of their position and the range of their political experience, are perhaps the most remarkable. The one an American, the other a Genevese, both were foreigners and republicans, both had had practical experience of domestic revolution, and both had learnt the lesson of freedom in self-governing communities. If Mallet du Pan, the fellow citizen of Rousseau and protégé of Voltaire, had enjoyed the advantage of passing his life in contact with the great world of European thought, Morris, one of the founders of the American Republic, had played a highly honourable and responsible part in the greatest event of the eighteenth century. And if Mallet du Pan, with his intimate knowledge of the social and political condition of European states, realised more profoundly and with ever deepening dejection the significance of the Revolution, which appears rather as an episode in the pages of Morris, it is possible that, in view of the mighty predominance of the Western Republic, history may justify the American

statesman's unconscious estimate of the relative importance of that event.

Born at the family estate of Morrisiana, in the State of New York, of ancestors not undistinguished as citizens, he arrived at manhood at the moment when the struggle of Independence began; he was elected at the age of twenty-three to the legislature of his own state, when he powerfully

advocated independence and took a prominent part in the debates on the Constitution of New York. Delegated in 1778 to the Continental Congress he became one of the most active agents of the system of government by committees, and distinguished himself especially in the departments of the organisation of the army, in the foreign negotiations, and in finance. The reputation he early gained in the last branch of administration designated him for the post of Assistant Superintendent of the Finances. His public career was crowned by his participation in the work of the convention for the formation of the constitution of the United States, which, according to his friend Madison, owed its shape and finish to his hand. He then devoted himself, in conjunction with the great financier Robert Morris, to commercial operations, in which he realised a large fortune and acquired the kind of experience most useful to an economist. It was in connection with private and semi-official matters of this nature, and not at first as minister of his country, that he arrived in France in February 1789.

Morris had fully profited by the best training for statesmanship, for he was thoroughly competent in law, finance and politics. His personal and social qualities were no less remarkable. His features are described as having been regular and expressive, his demeanour frank and dignified, and his figure tall and commanding, in spite of a wooden leg which an accident in early life obliged him to use. Of a sanguine and ambitious temperament, his chief characteristic in society was a daring self-possession, and he was often heard to declare that in his intercourse with men he never knew the sensation of

His

inferiority or embarrassment. liveliness, tact, and common sense made him a most agreeable companion, but in conversation upon politics, zeal, he says, always got the better of prudence. His keenest interest was in the study of men, and like George the Third, who once remarked that the most beautiful sight he ever beheld was the colliery country near Stroud, his attention in travelling was always directed less to the beauties of nature than to the details and economy of the various manufactures, to the agriculture of the country, and to all that concerned the comfort and condition of the people. With such a disposition he soon became a favourite in the salons of Paris, where to be an American was at that time almost a sufficient introduction. He speaks with but little enthusiasm of the society of that vaunted epoch. At one house he observed that each person "being occupied either in saying a good thing or in studying one to say, it is no wonder if he cannot find time to applaud that of his neighbour."

He availed himself, however, of his opportunities of making the acquaintance of men of many shades of opinion, and his judgments upon them are full of acuteness and sense. His connection with Lafayette introduced him at once to the revolutionary leaders. Lafayette himself received him with an hospitality which in this case was amply repaid by the efforts made in later years by Morris to obtain his release from the Austrian

Government. He very soon indeed found himself in opposition to Lafayette's ideas. At their first interview Morris saw him to be "too republican for the genius of his country." When the latter showed him the draft of the Declaration of Rights, he suggested amendments "tending to soften the high-coloured expressions of freedom." He did not spare his warnings or his criticism either in conversation or in writing, but when he told him in plain words that the

"thing called a constitution" which the Assembly had passed was good for nothing, it is not surprising that a certain coldness grew up between them. "He lasted longer than I expected," was Morris's remark, when his friend was crushed by the wheel which he put in motion. Talleyrand impressed him at first sight as a "sly, cool, cunning, ambitious man; and he put his finger upon the prevailing characteristic of the mind of Siéyès when he observed of him that he despised all that had been said or sung on the subject of government before him.

His criticism of Mirabeau, if not profound, is instructive as illustrating the side of his character which most impressed contemporaries. The greatest figure of the Revolution-except Bonaparte - Mira beau united genius and patriotism with degrading faults of character. His own cry of regret, perhaps the most pathetic ever uttered by a public man, is the explanation of the contradiction of his life :-" Combien l'immoralité de ma jeunesse fait de tort à la chose publique." The invincible repugnance

of the world was shown by the fact, noted by Morris, that he was received with hisses at the opening of the States-General. His past made him enter on the great struggle not as a philosopher or a statesman, but as a malcontent and a déclassé. His pecuniary embarrassments destroyed his personal independence, and sold him, in the words of his enemies, to the court. His personal ambition, his want of temper, his necessity for selfassertion, his "insatiate thirst for applause," led the great orator to endeavour to maintain his ascendency by thundering against the enemies of the Revolution and inflaming popular passion, while he was secretly working for the cause of the monarchy. And not in secret only. He clearly saw that the annihilation of the executive power, the paralysis of administration, would deliver over his country to the

violence of foreign enemies, and the worse misfortune of anarchy at home. He turned to the monarchy as the only anchor of safety. He considered that to restore to the king power, at least equal to that nominally exercised by the King of England, was the only way to avert disaster. His opposition to the declaration of rights, his abstention from the work of the abolition of feudalism on the day of the fourth of August, his contention for investing the king with the right of peace and war and with an absolute veto, without which he would "rather live in Constantinople than in Paris"; above all, his effort to induce the Assembly to give a seat in their body to the ministers of the crown, the constitutional pivot on which the fortunes of the Revolution may be said to have turned, were all public actions which might have won for him the confidence of moderate men of all parties. In such a union under such leadership lay the only hope, and with the presumption of genius he felt and proclaimed that he was the only man who could reconcile the monarchy with freedom. Yet Morris only echoed the sentiment of the best men of his time when he said "that there were in the world men who were to be employed but not trusted," "that virtue must ever be sullied by an alliance with vice," ""that Mirabeau was the most unprincipled scoundrel that ever lived."

The man to whose lot it fell to initiate the Revolution, whose duty it was to guide it, the man for whom Mirabeau could find no words strong enough to express his contempt, met with the following judgment from Gouverneur Morris. "M. Necker has obtained a much greater reputation than he had any right to. An unspotted integrity as minister, and serving at his own expense in an office which others seek for the purpose of enriching themselves, have acquired for him, very deservedly, much confidence. Add to this that his writings on finance teem with that sort of sensibility which

makes the fortune of modern romances, and which is exactly suited to this lively nation, who love to read but hate to think. Hence his reputation. He is without the talents of a great minister; and though he understands man as a covetous creature, he does not understand mankind; he is utterly ignorant of politics, by which I mean politics in the great sense. . . From the moment of convening the StatesGeneral he has been afloat upon the wide ocean of incidents."

Necker was, in fact, without the highest qualities of statesmanship. And when this is said, all is said. It was unjust, as a friend and contemporary writer truly observed, to reproach a minister for not leading an assembly which refused to be led, which at every turn insisted on giving lessons to its instructor. The finances could not be re-established when anarchy was universal, and authority non-existent, without credit, taxes, or public confidence. But although it was "as unjust to accuse him of the ruin of the finances as to accuse him of the loss of the battle of Ramillies," Morris was on no uncertain ground when he condemned Necker as a very poor financier, and nothing can be more luminous than his exposition of the fallacy of the system of borrowing from the caisse d'escompte, or the farce of the patriotic contribution, than his prediction of the ruin which must ensue from the issue of assignats. Morris had early realised the fact that the study of economic questions is the foundation of statesmanship. His writings had instructed his countrymen in liberal theories of commerce, and enlightened them on the abstruser questions of the nature of money and the sources and foundation of credit. In an official position he had done much to restore public and private credit, and introduce order into the financial administration, upon which, as he said, "the preservation of our federal union greatly depends." It is interesting to note in how many points he had criti

cised by anticipation the economic fallacies which distinguished the revolutionary epoch. He had, for instance, combated the regulation of prices by law, an expedient which became famous during the Terror under the name of the maximum laws, on the ground of the injustice of taxing a community by depre ciation; he had condemned taxes on money, which merely drew it from circulation and rendered the collection of taxes more difficult. The outcry against monopolists and forestallers which had arisen in the American colonies during the war, found its counterpart in the popular resentment during the whole course of the Revolution against the sangsues publiques, who saved the community from starvation by buying up and storing provisions and money. Morris had justified the operations of the capitalists by the economy which was thus introduced into consumption, the activity imparted to commerce, and the steadiness established in price. The well-to-do classes shared with the monopolists the execration of the mob; Morris had pointed out the impossibility of an economic distinction between luxuries and necessities, and ventured the remark that "there was a less proportion of rogues in coaches than out of them." The spirit in which he watched the great socialistic experiment of the Reign of Terror-the complete and even scientific character of which M. Taine has pointed out in the ablest chapters of his latest volume-may be gathered from a question he put to Hamilton, "How long a supposed society can exist, after property shall have been done away," and the answer which he gave, "that government being established to protect property is respected only in proportion to the fulfilment of that duty, and durable only as it is respectable."

If his previous experience had given. Morris competence in finance, it had given him also in a high degree a mastery of constitutional questions. His

criticism of the constitution of 1791 was worthy of the man to whose hand much of the American constitution was due, of the man whom Hamilton and Madison had invited to join in the writing of the Federalist. In his own country he had been unjustly accused of a leaning towards monarchy, so strong had been his dread of the "anarchy which would lead to monarchy. Among a people without the education or instincts of free government characteristic of English communities, he early saw his worst fear realised. "Despotic states perish for want of despotism, as cunning people for want of cunning." The suddenness of the collapse of the monarchy shows how true was the insight which led Mallet du Pan to say, in speaking of the various causes assigned for the French Revolution, the quarrels of the parlements, the assembling of the notables, the deficit, the ministry of Necker, the assaults of philosophy-"None of these things would have happened under a monarchy which was not rotten at the core." By the end of July Morris observed that "France was as near anarchy as a society could be without dissolution." The government of the country fell suddenly into the hands of an Assembly ignorant and inexperienced in public affairs, and Morris deplored that they had "all that romantic spirit, and those romantic ideas of government which, happily for America, we were cured of before it was too late." In a passage which has a reminiscence of the Reflections, he characterised the situation as it existed in November 1790:

"This unhappy country, bewildered in the pursuit of metaphysical whimsies, presents to our moral view a mighty ruin. Like the remnants of ancient magnificence, we admire the architecture of the temple, while we detest the false god to whom it was dedicated. Daws and ravens, and the birds of night, now build their nests in its niches. The sovereign, humbled to the level of a beggar's pity, without