of society was the real revolution; and this had been accomplished a long time before the events occurred, to which the name is commonly affixed. The violent explosion was little else than the breaking down of antiquated and obsolete forms, from which the spirit had long since departed: and the assumption of their share in the appearances of power by a portion of society which already possessed it in reality.

The same general circumstances, which existed in France, were also to be found, with different modifications, in almost all the continental countries. In all, with unimportant exceptions, the existing forms of administration had been established at a

period when the land constituted the only property; and when the human cultivators of the soil were intellectually nearly on a level with their brutal fellow labourers. That the military proprietors, who styled themselves nobles, should at that time exercise the whole political power, was a necessary consequence of the existing state of things. It was not quite so natural, that the descendants of these individuals should continue to monopolize all the power at a period when, in consequence of the rise and progress of industry and wealth, another class of proprietors had grown up in the community, generally more intelligent than the landholders, and

certainly as strongly interested in the proper administration of the public affairs. Had the question in dispute, however, been merely who should administer the government, and had the class of military proprietors conducted the administration with impartiality and ability, it may be doubted whether this monopoly of power would have created any considerable discontent. To administer the public affairs, like all other business, is in itself a care and a labour and could the mercantile and industrious. proprietors have felt a complete certainty that this labour, as far as they were interested in its results, would be performed in the best possible manner, there seems no reason to suppose that they would have felt any strong desire to do it themselves. But in reality it is impossible that they could ever feel this assurance. In public, as in private affairs, no individual willingly places his property wholly beyond his own control and inspection, whatever confidence he may place in the persons whom he employs. Hence the state of things was in itself unnatural: but, independently of this, the mercantile and industrious classes had reason to be satisfied, long before they were important enough to be able to make themselves heard in society, that they should be compelled to endure, not only the necessary inconveniences of this political situation, but

all the multiplied and aggravated mischiefs that could possibly be made to flow from it by the most wanton abuse of power. That they were excluded from the administration of government was a slight grievance. It became of more importance when governments, instead of consulting and promoting their interest, attempted to crush and oppress them by every description of imposition and prohibition, that could be imagined. Indifference itself must have given way to indignation at the revolting injustice displayed by the privileged classes in exempting themselves by their own act from the taxes which they imposed upon the industrious proprietors. Not content with these arrogant and odious assumptions, they pushed their pretensions still farther and claimed, under the name of nobility, an inherent and essential superiority of blood and race, over their industrious fellow citizens. To live in idleness was to live nobly; and it was a disgrace and degradation to exercise any description of manual and intellectual labour and it may be remarked as a proof how strongly the most unjust and absurd opinions fasten themselves upon society by the force of habit, that this prejudice still prevails as strongly as ever in the higher classes of society.

Such a state of things necessarily established a hostile relation between the industrious classes of

the community and the landed proprietors; the result of which was of course determined by the progress of events. Had the impulse which gave a spring to commerce and industry been less powerful and active than it was, they must have sunk under the load of so much oppression and contumely; and Europe would now have been grovelling in the barbarism of the earliest feudal times, or more probably would have fallen still lower in the scale of degradation; and instead of being, as it is, the light and glory of the world, would have exhibited the sad spectacle of decay and misery that we see in Turkey, Persia, and Morocco. Happily the spirit of improvement was too powerful to be checked: and supposing it, as it has proved to be, sufficiently active to give the industrious classes a constantly augmenting importance in the community, notwithstanding every thing that was done to oppress and insult them, it is evident that the privileged proprietors must have ultimately receded of themselves from their odious pretensions; or that a period would arrive sooner or later under any circumstances, when the two interests would come into collision. Wealth and knowledge are the ingredients of essential power. When the intelligence and wealth of the industrious classes had risen to an equality with those of the landed proprietors, or

privileged orders, they would be in substance equally powerful; and it is not in human nature that they should then submit to the degradation and oppression which they had been obliged to endure, when they were a small and insignificant portion of the community. Supposing them even from the force of habit to continue to submit to it at this epoch, a period would soon arrive, in the progress of their increasing influence, when their wealth and intelligence would be far superior to those of the nobles; as they now are in fact in the civilized parts of Europe. Their final emancipation and the struggle necessary to effect it must therefore be regarded as necessary and inevitable occurrences in the course of events.

Hence the collision of interests, of which so many symptoms have appeared in Europe for the last two or three centuries; which, if it did not actually cause the Reformation, gave it most of its political importance; which burst out with such a tremendous explosion in the French Revolution, and is now agitating and convulsing, in greater or less degrees, every part of Christendom, except Russia and the United States, which from precisely opposite causes are entirely exempt from its influence. 'This collision of interests is not an obscure conspiracy, or an accidental disorder in the political