the chariot along; but they were not so insane as to cast the charioteer from his seat, and allow their strength and energy to overturn and destroy the vehicle: they acknowledged with gratitude the genial warmth of the central heat, which clothed the sides of the volcano with luxuriant fruits; but they looked to either hand, and beheld in the black furrow of desolation the track of the burning lava which had issued from its summit when it escaped its barriers, and filled the Heavens with an eruption.

Nothing daunted by this long and majestic array of authority against him, Mr Bulwer has taken the field in four octavo volumes, in order to illustrate the beneficial effect of Republican institutions upon social greatness and national prosperity. He has selected for his subject the Athenian democracy the eye of Greece-the cradle of history, tragedy, and the fine arts; the spot in the world where, in the narrowest limits, achievements the most mighty have been won, and genius the most immortal has been developed. He conceived, doubtless, that in Attica at least the extraordi. nary results of democratic agency could not be disputed; the Roman victories might be traced to the wisdom of the Senate; the Swiss patriotism to the simplicity of its mountains; the prosperity of Holland to the wisdom of its burgomasters; the endurance of America to the boundless vent afforded by its back settlements; but in Athens none of these peculiarities existed, and there the brilliant results of popular rule and long established self-government were set forth in imperishable colours. We rejoice he has made the attempt; we anticipate nothing but good to the Conservative cause from his efforts. It is a common saying among lawyers, that falsehood may be exposed in a witness by crossexamination; but that truth only comes out the more clearly from all the efforts which are made for its confusion. It is a fortunate day for the cause of historic truth when the leaders of the democratic party leave the declamation of the hustings and the base flattery of popular adulation, and betake themselves to the arena of real argument. We feel the same joy at beholding Mr Bulwer arm himself in the panoply of the field, and court the assaults of historical investigation,

with which the knights of old saw themselves extricated from the mob of plebeian insurrection, and led forth to the combat of highborn chivalry.

Mr Bulwer is, in every point of view, a distinguished writer. His work on England and the English is a brilliant performance, abounding with sparkling, containing some profound, observations, and particularly interesting to the multitude of persons to whom foreign travelling has rendered the comparison of English and French character and institutions an object of interest. The great defects of his writings, in a political point of view, are the total absence of any reference to a superintending power and the moral government of the world; and the continual and laboured attempt to exculpate the errors, and screen the vices, and draw a veil over the perils of democratic government. The want of the first, in an investigation into human affairs, is like the absence of the character of Hamlet in the play bearing his name: the presence of the second a continued drawback on the pleasure which an impartial mind derives from his otherwise able and interesting observations. More especially is a constant sense of the corruption and weakness of human nature an indispensable element in every enquiry or observation which has for its object the weighing the capability of mankind to bear the excitements, and wield the powers, and exercise the responsibility of self-government. We are not going to enter into any theological argument on original sin, how intimately soever it may be blended with the foundation of all investigations into the right principles of government; we assert only a fact, demonstrated by the experience of every age, and acquiesced in by the wise of every country, that there is an universal tendency to corruption and license in human nature

that religion is the only effectual bridle on its excesses, and that the moment that a community is established, without the effective agency of that powerful curb on human passion, the progress of national affairs becomes nothing but the career of the prodigal, brilliant and alluring in the outset, dismal and degrading in the end. It is on this account that the friends of freedom have in every age been the most resolute and persevering

enemies of democracy; because that fervent and searching element, essential to national existence, and the best ingredient in its prosperity, if duly coerced and tempered, becomes its most devouring and fatal enemy the instant that it breaks through its barriers, and obtains the unrestrained direction of the public destinies.

The views of the republican and the democrat are the very reverse of all this. According to them, wickedness and corruption are the inheritance of the oligarchy alone; aristocracies are always selfish, grasping, rapacious; democracies invariably energetic, generous, confiding. Nobles, they argue, never act but from designing or selfish views; their constant agent is human corruption; their incessant appeal to the basest and most degrading principles of our nature. Republicans alone are really philanthropic in their views; they alone attend to the interests of the masses; they alone lay the foundations of the social system on the broad basis of general well-being. Monarchical governments are founded on the caprice of a single tyrant; aristocratic on the wants of a rapacious oligarchy; democratic alone on the consulted desires and grateful experience of the whole community. If these propositions were all true, they would be decisive in favour of popular, and highly popular institutions; but unfortunately, though it is perfectly correct that monarchies and aristocracies are mainly directed, if uncontrolled by the people, to support the interests of a single or an oligar chical government, it is no less true, that the rapacity of a democracy is just as great; that the responsibility of its leaders, from the number of those invested with power, is infinitely less, and that the calamities which, in its unmitigated force it in consequence lets loose on the community, are such as in every age have led to its speedy

subversion.

The Conservative principle of government, on the other hand, is, that mankind are radically and universally corrupt; that when invested with power, in whatever form of government, and from whatever class of society, they are immediately inclined to apply it to their own selfish ends; that the diffusion of education and knowledge has no tendency whatever to eradicate this universal propensity,

but only gives it a different, less violent, but not less interested direction ;that the diffusion of supreme power among a multitude of hands diminishes to nothing the responsibility of each individual, while it augments in a proportionate degree the rapacity and selfishness which is brought to bear on public affairs;-that when the multitude are the spectators of government, they are inclined to check or restrain its abuses, because others profit, and they suffer by them; but when they become government itself, they instantly support them, because they profit, and others suffer from their continuance ;-that democratic institutions thus, when once fully and really established, rapidly deprave the public mind, and engender an universal spirit of selfishness in the majority of the people, which speedily subverts the foundations of national prosperity; and that it is only when property is the directing, and numbers the controlling power, that the inherent vices and selfishness of the depositaries of authority can be effectually coerced by the opinion of the great majority who are likely to suffer by its excesses, or a lasting foundation be laid in the adherence of national opinion to the principles of virtue for any lengthened enjoyment of the blessings of prosperity, or any durable discharge of the commands of duty.

These are the opposite and conflicting principles of Government which are now at issue in the world: and it is to support the former that Mr Bul wer has brought the power of a cultivated mind and the vigour of an enlarged intellect. Athens was a favourable ground to take, in order to enforce the incalculable powers of the democratic spring in society. No. where else is to be found a state so small in its origin, and yet so great in its progress: so contracted in its territory, and yet so gigantic in its achievements: so limited in numbers, and yet so immortal in greatness. Its dominions on the continent of Greece did not exceed an English county; its free inhabitants never amounted to thirty thousand citizens-yet these inconsiderable numbers have filled the world with their renown; poetry, philosophy, architecture, sculpture, tragedy, comedy, geometry, physics, history, politics, almost date their origin from Athenian genius: and the

monuments of art with which they have overspread the world still form the standard of taste in every civilized nation on earth. It is not surprising that so brilliant and captivating a spectacle should in every age have dazzled and transported mankind; and that seeing democratic institutions co-existing with so extraordinary a developement of the intellectual faculties, it should have come to be generally imagined that they really were cause and effect, and that the only secure foundation which could be laid for the attainment of the highest honours of our being was in the extension of the powers of Government to the great body of the people.

Athens, however, has its dark as well as its brilliant side; and if the perfection of its science, the delicacy of its taste, and the refinement of its arts, furnish a plausible, and, in a certain degree, a just ground for representing democratic institutions as the greatest stimulant to the human mind, the brevity of its existence, the injustice of its decisions, the instability of its councils, and the cruelty of its decrees afford too fair a reason for doubting the wisdom of imitating, on a larger scale, any of its institutions. Its rise was rapid and glorious; but the era of its prosperity was brief; and it sunk, after a short space of existence, into an obscure, and, politically speak ing, insignificant old age.

The sway

of the multitude, who formed the council of last resort in the commonwealth, was capricious and tyrannical; and such as thoroughly disgusted all the states in alliance. There was the secret of its weakness. Instead of protecting and cherishing the tributary and allied states, the Athenian democracy insulted and oppressed them, and in consequence, on the first serious reverse, they all revolted; and the fleets which had constituted their strength were at once ranged on the side of the enemies of the state. The flames of Aigospotamos consumed the Athenian navy; but that disaster, great as it undoubtedly was, was not greater than the rout of Trasymene, the slaughter of Cannae, the irruption of the Gauls to Rome. But Athens had not the steady persevering rule of the Roman Patricians; nor the wise and beneficent policy of the Senate to the states and alliance, and thence they wanted both the energy requisite

to rise superior to all their misfortunes, and the grateful feelings which, in moments of disaster, ranged the allied states in steady and durable array around them. During the invasion by Hannibal, which, as involving a civil contest between the Patricians and Plebeians in all the Italian cities, very nearly resembled the Peloponnesian war, not one state of any moment revolted from the Roman alliance till after the disaster of Cannae; and even then it was only Capua, the rival of Rome, which took any vigorous part with the Carthagenians, and a very little effort was sufficient to retain the other allied cities in the Roman confederacy, or reclaim such as, from the presence of the Punic arms, had passed over to their enemies. Whereas in Greece, on the very first reverse, the whole states and colonies in alliance constantly passed over to the Lacedemonian league; and the growth of the power of Athens was repeatedly checked by the periodical reduction of its strength to the resources of its own territory. the Athenian multitude possessed the enduring fortitude and beneficent rule of the Roman aristocracy, they might, like them, have risen superior to every reverse, and gradually spread, by the willing incorporation of lesser statcs with their dominions, into a vast empire, extending over the whole shores of the Mediterranean, and giving law, like the mighty empire which succeeded them, for a thousand years to the whole civilized world.

Had

Mr Bulwer appears to be aware of the brief tenure of existence which Athens enjoyed; but he erroneously ascribes to general causes or inevitable necessity what in its case was the result merely of the fever of democratic activity.

"In that restless and unpausing energy, which is the characteristic of an intellectual republic, there seems, as it were, a kind of destiny: a power impossible to resist urges the state from action to action, from progress to progress, with a rapidity dangerous while it dazzles; resembling in this the career of individuals impelled onward, first to attain, and thence to preserve, power, and who cannot struggle against the fate which necessitates them to soar, until, by the moral gravitation of human things, the point which has no beyond is attained; and the next effort to rise is but the prelude of their fall. In such states Time, indeed, moves with gigantie

strides; years concentrate what would be the epochs of centuries in the march of less popular institutions. The planet of their fortunes rolls with an equal speed through the cycle of internal civilisation as of foreign glory. The condition of their brilliant life is the absence of repose. The accelerated circulation of the blood beautifies but consumes, and action itself, exhausting the stores of youth by its very vigour, becomes a mortal but divine disease."

Now, in this eloquent passage there is an obvious error: and it is on this point that the Conservative or Constitutional principle of Government mainly differs from the Movement or Democratic. Aware of the violence of the fever which in Republican states exhausts the strength and wears out the energy of the people, the Conservative would not extinguish but regulate it; he would stop its diseased and feverish, to prolong and strengthen its healthy and vital action. He would not allow the youth to waste his strength and life in a brief period of guilty excess, or unrestrained indulgence, but so chasten and moderate the fever of the blood as to secure for him an useful manhood and a respected old age. The democrat, on the other hand, would plunge him at once into all the excesses of youth and intemperance, throw him into the arms of harlots and the orgies of drunkenness, and, amidst wine and women, the harp and the dance, lead him to poverty, sickness, and premature dissolution. And ancient history affords a memorable contrast in this particular; for while Athens, worn out and exhausted by the fever of democratic activity, rose like a brilliant meteor only to fall after a life as short as that of a single individual, Rome, in whom this superabundant energy was for centuries coerced and restrained by the solidity of Patrician institutions and the steadiness of Patrician rule, continued steadily to rise and advance through a succession of ages, and at length succeeded in subjecting the whole civilized earth to its dominion.

It has long been a matter of reproach to Athens, that she behaved with the blackest ingratitude to her greatest citizens; and that Miltiades, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon, Socrates, Thucydides, and a host of other illustrious men, received exile, confiscation, or death as the reward for the inestimable benefits they had conferred

VOL. XLII. NO. CCLXI.

upon their fellow-citizens. Mr Bulwer is much puzzled how to explain away these awkward facts; but as the banishment of these illustrious citizens, and the death of this illustrious sage, from the effects of popular jealousy, cannot be denied, he boldly endeavours to justify these atrocious acts of the Athenian democracy. In regard to Miltiades he observes:

"The case was simply this,-Miltiades was accused-whether justly or unjustly no matter-it was clearly as impossible not to receive the accusation, and to try the cause, as it would be for an English court of jus tice to refuse to admit a criminal action against Lord Grey or the Duke of Wellington. Was Miltiades guilty or not? This we cannot tell. We know that he was tried according to the law, and that the Athenians thought him guilty, for they condemned him. So far this is not ingratitude-it is the course of law. A man is tried and found guilty-if past services and renown were to save the great from punishment when convicted of a state offence, society would, perhaps, he disorganized, and certainly a free state would cease to exist. The question, therefore, shrinks to this-was it, or was it not ungrateful in the people to relax the penalty of death, legally incurred, and commute it to a heavy fine? I fear we shall find few instances of greater clemency in monarchies, however mild. Miltiades unhappily died. But nature slew him, not the Athenian people. And it cannot be said with greater justice of the Athenians, than of a people no less illustrious, and who are now their judges, that it was their custom, 'de tuer un Amiral pour encourager les

autres.

This passage affords an example of the determination which Mr Bulwer generally evinces to justify and support the acts of his darling democracy, however extravagant or monstrous they may have been. Doubtless, we are not informed very specifically as to the nature of the evidence adduced in support of the charge of bribery brought against Miltiades. Doubtless, also, it was necessary to receive the charge when once preferred; but was it necessary to convict him, and send the hero of Marathon, the saviour of his country, into a painful exile, which ultimately proved his death? That is the point, and, as the evidence is not laid before us, what right has Mr Bulwer to assume that the Athenian multitude were not ungrateful or unjust in their decision? For their conduct, in

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