Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 353, March 1845

The truth on this subject could not so long have been kept out of view, had it not been that, till very recently, no historian at all worthy of the name has approached the subject of English history during the eighteenth century. The immortal work of Hume, as all the world knows, comes down only to the Revolution of 1688; and of the subsequent period, down to that when his history was written, in 1760, he has told us only that the monopoly of offices, places, and opinions, by the dominant Whig party, had been so close and uninterrupted, that it had well-nigh rendered it impossible to arrive at the truth on the subject. Smollett, whose continuation of Hume is to be seen in every bookseller's window beside its great predecessor, is wholly unworthy of the honourable place which chance, and the neglect of others, have hitherto assigned it. Admirable as a novelist – at least as that character was understood in those days – graphic, entertaining, humourous – Smollett had none of the qualities necessary for a historian. He was neither a soldier nor an orator, a poet nor a philosopher. The campaigns of Marlborough, the eloquence of Chatham, were alike lost upon him. He was neither warmed by the victory of Blenheim nor the death of Wolfe: the adventures of Charles Edward and the disasters of Saratoga, were narrated with the same imperturbable phlegm. As to philosophic views of the progress of society, or the social and political effects of the Revolution of 1688 and the Reformation, the thing was out of the question: it neither belonged to his age nor character, to dream of any thing of the kind. He was, in his history at least, a mere bookseller's hack, who compiled a very dull and uninteresting work from the information, scanty during his period, which the Annual Register and Parliamentary History afforded. If a greater annalist than he do not arise to do justice to his merits, the fame even of Marlborough will never descend, at least in its full proportions, to future generations.

It is deeply to be regretted that Sir James Mackintosh did not complete his long-cherished design of continuing Hume's history. No man, since Hume's time, possessed so many qualifications for the undertaking. To an incomparable talent for depicting character, and a luminous philosophic mind, he joined great erudition, extensive knowledge, and a practical acquaintance both with statesmen and ordinary life. Though he was a party man, and had early taken, in his Vindiciæ Gallicæ, a decided part against Burke, in apology of the French Revolution, yet he possessed great candour of mind, and had magnanimity enough, in maturer years, to admit, that he had been far led astray in early life by the inexperience and ardour of youth. When a man possesses this equanimity and justice of mind, it is wholly immaterial to what political party he belongs, and with what preconceived opinions he undertakes the task of narrating events. Truth will shine out in every page – justice will preside over every decision – facts will inevitably lead to the correct conclusion. It is perverted genius, skilful partisanship, imagination brought to the aid of party, and learning dedicated to the support of delusion, which is really to be dreaded. Mackintosh's mind was essentially philosophical: this appears in every page of his Life by his sons – one of the most interesting pieces of biography in the English language. His characters of statesmen, orators, and poets, in England during the eighteenth century, chiefly written at Bombay, or during the voyage home, are perhaps unparalleled in our language for justice and felicity. They show how richly stored his mind was; how correctly his taste had been formed on the best models; how vast a stock of images, comparisons, and associations, he brought to bear on the events and characters which he passed in survey. He had not a poetical mind, and was destitute of a pictorial eye. His history, therefore, never would have been adorned by those moving scenes, those graphic pictures, which are the life and soul of the highest style of history, and which have given immortality to the writings of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. But the eighteenth century, though by no means destitute of events calling for such imaginative powers, has perhaps less of them than any equal period in English history. What is mainly required for it is a philosophic mind, to appreciate the effects of the great convulsions of the preceding century, and an impartial judgment, to discern the causes which were preparing the still more terrible catastrophe of the nineteenth. Mackintosh possessed these great and valuable qualities in a very high degree; and his history, if he had succeeded in completing it, would unquestionably have taken its place with those of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. The thing really to be lamented is, that the time which Providence allotted to him, and which was amply sufficient for the completion even of so great an undertaking, was wasted amidst the attractions and frivolity of high London society; and that, more even than the heroic Swede in captivity, he was

"Condemn'd a needy suppliant to wait,
While ladies interpose, and slaves debate."

Lord Mahon has conferred essential obligations on English history. He has brought to the annals of the British empire during the eighteenth century, qualities nearly the reverse of those of Mackintosh, but which are, nevertheless, not less essential than those of the Scotch philosopher, for a right appreciation and correct delineation of the period. He is a scholar, a gentleman, and a man of the world. Possessed of great knowledge of his subject, vigorous application, and a classical turn of expression, he has united to these qualities those, in historical writers, still rarer, of a practical acquaintance with statesmen, both in Parliament and private life, and a thorough knowledge of the leading public characters, both military, literary, and dignified, of his own time. Every one must see what valuable qualities these are, for a correct appreciation and faithful narrative of the history of England during the eighteenth century – great part of which was not distinguished by any enthusiasm or impulse in the public mind, and during which the springs of events were to be found rather in the intrigues of the court, the coteries of the nobility, or the cabals of Parliament, than in any great movements of the people, or mighty heaves of the human mind. In truth, no one but a person moving in the sphere and possessed of the connexions which Lord Mahon enjoys, could either obtain the knowledge, or understand the real springs of events, during a great part of the period he has embraced in his work. But still the history of the eighteenth century remains to be written. Lord Mahon has remarkable talents as a biographer; his account of the Rebellion in 1745, and subsequent adventures of Charles Edward, is not surpassed in interest by any thing in the English language, and is justly referred to by Sismondi, in his History of France, as by far the best account of that interesting episode in British history. But his History of England are "Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire," rather than history itself. We want in his pages the general views drawn from particular facts, the conclusions applicable to all ages, which mark the philosophic historian. His volumes will always occupy a distinguished place in English literature, and will prove of essential service to every succeeding writer who may undertake to treat of the period which they embrace; but the mantle of Hume is destined to fall on other shoulders.

Walpole's correspondence and memoirs, in many respects, are highly valuable, and will always be referred to, as throwing much important light on the parliamentary and court transactions of the middle of the eighteenth century. They develope much that was known to no other man, at least to no other with whose writings we are yet acquainted, who has left any record of his information to future times. In this respect, his memoirs are invaluable. It is astonishing how much information there is afloat in the higher political circles, in every age, which is generally known at the time to all who frequent them, which, on that very account, perishes altogether with that generation. No one thinks of committing it to paper any more than they do the stages to London, or the names of the months in the year, or the usual forms of society – because every one knows them. Thus the information, often of essential value to future historians, perishes like the beauty of the women which has adorned the age, unless some garrulous gossip, in his correspondence or memoirs, has been trifling enough for his age, and wise enough for the next, to commit it to paper. Horace Walpole was that garrulous gossip. His correspondence with Sir H. Mann, embracing altogether a period of twenty years, which had previously been published, and his Memoirs of the Reign of George III., which have recently appeared, contain an account, tinged no doubt by strong party feelings, but still an account of a very long and important period of English history; and abound not only in curious facts, interesting to the antiquary or the biographer, but contain many important revelations of essential value to the national or general historian of the period.

The praise of these volumes, however, must be taken with much alloy. Horace Walpole was a man of the world and a courtier; he had quick natural parts and much acquired discernment. He was a good scholar, was fond of antiquities, and a passionate admirer of curiosities, which he collected with indefatigable industry, and no small success, from every quarter. He had lived too long in the political and the great world not to have learned its selfishness and appreciated its heartlessness; not to have become acquainted with many political secrets, and seen enough of political baseness. He had considerable powers of observation, and occasionally makes a profound remark, especially on the selfish tendencies and the secret springs of the human heart. His characters are all drawn from the life; and often with great power both of observation and expression. But he had not sufficient steadiness of thought or purpose to achieve any thing considerable, or draw any important conclusions even from the multifarious information of which he was master, or the powers of observation which he possessed. There was nothing grand or generous in his composition. No elevated thoughts, no lofty aspirations, no patriotic resolves, are visible in his writings. Political insouciance was his prevailing habitude of mind; an invincible tendency to "laissez aller" the basis of his character. But he did not lie by and observe events, like Metternich and Talleyrand, to become embued with their tendency, and ultimately gain the mastery of them; he let them take their course, and in reality cared very little for the result. He was an epicurean, not a stoic, in politics. His character approaches very nearly to that which common report has assigned to Lord Melbourne. He had strong party attachments, and still stronger party antipathies; he seems to have devoutly swallowed the creed so common to party men of every age, that all those on his side were noble and virtuous, and all those against him, base and selfish. He had much of the wit of Erasmus, but he had also a full share of his aversion to martyrdom. But we shall find abundance of patriotic declamation, cutting invective, and querulous complaint. The misfortune is, that the declamation is always against the triumph of the Tories; the invective against the astuteness of Lord Bute; the complaint against the disunion of the Whig leaders, or the Tory influences at court.

There is class of readers considerable among men, numerous among women, in whom the appetite for scandal is so strong, that it altogether overleaps the bounds of time and faction, and seizes with nearly as much avidity on the private gossip of the past as of the present age. With such persons, the next best thing to discovering a faux pas among their acquaintances, is to hear of it among their grandmothers; the greatest comfort, next to laying bare political baseness in their rulers, is to discover it in the government which ruled their fathers. We confess we do not belong to this class. We have little taste for scandal, either in the male or female great world. We see so much of selfishness, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness, around us, that their details have not only entirely lost the charm of novelty, but become absolutely sickening by repetition. To such readers the first volume of Wraxall's Memoirs must be a precious morsel. We never doubted that the anecdotes he told were in the main true, from the moment we saw the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews combined in running him down. Nothing but truth could have produced so portentous an alliance. They combined in saying that what he said was a libel. Doubtless they were right, upon the principle, that the greater the truth the greater the libel. To such readers we would strongly recommend the Memoirs and Correspondence of Walpole. They will find a mass of scandal adequate to satiate the most voracious appetite; evidence of general corruption sufficient to satisfy the most vehement political opponent.

It is in the evidence which these volumes afford, of the general corruption of Great Britain during the greater part of the eighteenth century, that, in our humble opinion, the most valuable lesson of political wisdom is to be found which that period conveys. We rise from the long series of his amusing volumes with the firm conviction, that in his days all parties were base, and all statesmen in a certain sense corrupt. They absolutely render the common story credible, that during the days of Sir R. Walpole, when the members of Parliament were invited to dine with the prime-minister, each found a L.500 bank-note under his napkin, when he took it off his plate at dinner. At any rate the long, and in many respects beneficent, reign of that veteran statesman was maintained entirely by patronage and corruption. Horace Walpole himself tells us that it was commonly said, at the accession of George III. in 1761, that the country was governed by two hundred noblemen, who received more from the government than they gave to it. The influence of these two hundred noblemen, in their respective counties or boroughs, was maintained by the most unsparing use, sometimes of actual bribery, always of government patronage, to secure the adherence of every political partisan, even of the very lowest grade. With truth it might be said of England at that time, as it was of France before the Revolution, that "no one was so great as to be beyond the hatred of a minister, nor so little as to escape the notice of a comptroller of excise." Every office in the state, from the prime minister down to the humblest employé in the post-office or customs, was conferred to secure the fidelity of political supporters. Liberality to opponents, the public good, fair dealing, the claims of long service to the country, destitution, charity, noble descent, patriotic conduct, were alike scouted, and by common consent banished from the consideration of public men. Political support was the one thing needful; and to secure it nothing was grudged, without it nothing was to be got. Johnson's well-known definition of an exciseman, shows the profound indignation which this universal and unsparing system of corruption excited, among the few resolute and generous spirits which its long continuance had left in the country. We heard nothing of the evils of this system from the Whigs, during the seventy years subsequent to the Revolution, when it was practised by themselves; but we have heard enough of it from them since that time, when the state machine they had erected has been worked by their opponents.

The Emperor Nicholas said to the Marquis Custine, with much bitterness and some truth – "I can understand a democracy, where the popular voice is every thing, and the magistrates implicitly obey its mandates. I can understand a despotism, where the monarch's voice is every thing, and the people merely obey his commands. But a constitutional monarchy, where the people are mocked by a show of liberty which they do not possess, and bribed into submission by corruption, by which they are really degraded – that I do not understand, and I hope in God never again to see it. I had enough of it in the government of Poland." Amidst all the blessings of a limited and representative monarchy, which no one who surveys the mighty empire of Great Britain can dispute, there is, it must be confessed, some truth in this caustic remark. Walpole has told us of the astonishing extent to which corruption was carried in his day, by Lord Bute and the Tories, who got possession of the corrupting government in 1761, which the Whigs had been constructing since 1688. The untoward issue of the war, which terminated in 1749 in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the disgraceful commencement of the Seven Years' War, unjustly expiated by the blood of Byng, gloriously redeemed by the genius of Chatham; the disasters of the American contest; the frequent defeats of the first years of the Revolutionary war, afford decisive evidence how deeply this degrading and corrupting system had entered into the vitals of the nation during the eighteenth century. Every one knows that America was lost in consequence of the imbecility and selfish views of the commanders, whom the corrupt system of government in Great Britain had raised to the head of affairs. On several occasions, they might, with a little energy, have terminated the war with glory to themselves and their country. The disasters of Flanders, in 1793 and 1794, were in a great measure owing to the same cause. During peace, influential imbecility is constantly rising to the head of affairs, and the consequences immediately appear on the first breaking out of hostilities. Nothing but the pressure and disasters of war, can drive government out of the inveterate vice of purchasing parliamentary support by the promotion of incapable and improper persons. The Whigs, since they were driven from the helm of affairs in 1761, have been constantly declaiming against this system, which they themselves had introduced and matured during the preceding seventy years; and the clamour they raised at last became so violent, that it brought about the great organic change of 1832. But no sooner were they again seated in power, than the same system was not only pursued by them, but extended: patronage was augmented in every possible way; a new machine for influence, adapted to the time – that of commissions – was introduced and largely worked, and promotions in every department were rigidly confined to political partisans. It has been a frequent subject of complaint against the Tory government, both before the Revolution of 1832, and on their return to power in 1841, that they were too liberal to their opponents, and forgetful of their friends, in the dispensing of the public patronage; and we have only to take up the Red Book, to see that this praise or imputation justly belongs to them. But no man alive ever heard of a Whig, during the ten years they were in power, being accused of giving any thing to a Tory. The saying, which had passed into a proverb during that period, that "the Whigs could do with impunity many things to which the Tories could never set their faces," proves how rapidly this degrading system of official corruption was again spreading, during the Whig tenure of power, in domestic government. The disasters of Affghanistan, the shaking of our power in India, the abortive first two years' hostilities with China, show with what dreadful danger it was attended to our external power and even national existence.

We have said that it is the decisive mark of a party writer to ascribe political and private vices to his opponents, from which he represents his own side as exempt; and we have immediately afterwards said, that the wide-spread corruption, and constant promotion of influential imbecility, which, ever since 1688, has been the bane of Great Britain, and the chief, if not the sole, cause of all the disasters we have undergone, and of nine-tenths of the debts we have contracted, is mainly to be ascribed to the Whigs, who, during the long period of seventy years, immediately subsequent to the Revolution, were exclusively in power, and had the entire moulding of the constitution, both in church and state, in their hands. Having taken the mote out of our neighbour's eye, we proceed to take the beam out of our own. We hasten to show that we do not ascribe greater political baseness to one party than another. We will not follow the example of Walpole, who represents Chatham, and all his Whig followers, as patriotic angels; Bute, and all his Tory supporters, as selfish devils. We assume it as the basis of all just or rational historical discussion, that, though there may be a wide and most important difference in the beneficial or ruinous effects with which their measures are attended, the real character, the moral purity of the motives, of men of opposite parties, in the same age, is much alike. There is, indeed, a wide difference in the virtue and public spirit of different ages, and of men in the same community, under different circumstances; but in the same age, and under the same circumstances, they are very like similar.

The patriotism of Regulus and Fabricius was very different from that which followed the insurrection of the Gracchi; but Sylla and Marius, Cæsar and Pompey, differed, if their real motives are considered, very little from each other. The same result would probably have followed the triumphs of either. There is no such thing as all the sheep being on one side and all the goats on another, in the same country at the same time. The proportion of good and bad men, of generous and base motives, among the Roundheads and Cavaliers, was much the same. The cabal which was framing a government of despotic power for Charles II., was doubtless selfish and tyrannical; but Algernon Sidney, and the whole patriots who opposed them, except Lord Russell, were quietly taking, the whole time, bribes from Louis XIV. Severity was doubtless exercised in the punishment of the leaders, some of whom were noble and high-minded men, of the Rye-House Plot; but that was only in retaliation of the still greater atrocities consequent on the fictitious Popish plots, and the perjury of Titus Oates. The Revolution of 1688 was, doubtless, brought about, as a whole, by necessity and patriotic intentions; but Churchill proved a traitor to his benefactor and king, and betrayed his trust to promote that revolution – a crime as deep as that for which Ney justly suffered in the gardens of the Luxembourg – and the blackness of which all the glories of Marlborough have not been able to efface. The government of Lord Bute and Lord North was doubtless mainly based on the influence of official or parliamentary patronage, and the evils of that corruption clearly appeared in the disasters of the American war; but these Tory noblemen only carried on the system invented and brought to perfection, during the seventy years that the Whigs had enjoyed a monopoly of power.

It is a first principle, says Sismondi, in politics, that all classes which have not constitutionally the means of resistance, will be oppressed. There can be no doubt that this is true; and it is not less true, that all power which is not systematically watched, will become corrupt. It is these principles which explain the universal and wide-spread corruption which overran the country for a century after the Revolution; and they point to a conclusion of the very highest importance in political science. Direct or tyrannical power, by means of the prerogative, or the simple will, of the sovereign, having become impossible, in consequence of the safeguards established by the Great Rebellion and the Revolution, and the disposition to tyranny and abuse remaining the same, from the corrupt tendency of the human heart, the system of gaining a majority, both in Parliament and in the constituencies, by means of government influence and official corruption, became the acknowledged, and probably unavoidable, basis of government. During the seventy years that the Whigs were in power, they brought this system to perfection, and extended its ramifications into the remotest corners of the kingdom. A majority of the House of Peers, in the Whig interest, amply provided with emoluments, offices, and dignities, got possession of so many boroughs and counties, that they secured a majority in the Commons also, and got the entire command of government. The sovereigns on the throne – men of little capacity, imperfectly acquainted with English, unable, from that cause, even to preside at the meetings of their own cabinet, and strongly opposed by an ardent and generous, because disinterested, party in the country – became mere puppets in their hands, and rendered the crown nearly destitute of all real or independent weight in the kingdom.

The natural check in a free country upon this corrupt system, into which every constitutional monarchy has so strong a tendency to run, is found in the vigorous opposition and incessant watchfulness of the people. It is this which has been so powerful a restraint upon the abuses of government during the last half century; and which has now become so strong, that the common complaint is, that, in all important appointments at least, the Tory ministry are forgetful of their friends, and select the persons to be appointed from the ranks of their enemies. But this salutary check upon bad government did not exist during the first half of the eighteenth century; or rather, it existed only to fan and augment the inclination, already sufficiently strong, to corrupt administration on the part of the Whig oligarchy, who had got possession of the helm. The popular party were now in power; their leaders had the disposal of every thing, and therefore not a whisper escaped their lips, as to the degrading system which was so fast spreading in the country. The Tories, who were in opposition, were a discredited and defeated party. They had got into ugly company – they had the axe impending over them. The unsuccessful result of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745, had, as is always the case, not only greatly augmented the strength of the ruling government, but it had rendered the Tories, who were in great part, and probably justly, suspected of a leaning to the rebels, to the last degree obnoxious to a large majority of the English people. Religious feeling combined with political antipathy and personal terror to produce this emotion. The Tories were associated, in the popular mind, with Jacobites and rebels; with Popish mummery and national antipathy; with the fires of Smithfield and the defeat of Prestonpans; with Scotch ascendency and revenge for the blood shed at Carlisle; with breechless Highlanders and Protestant confiscation. Thus the Tories, as a popular party, capable of exercising any effective control on the vices and corruptions of administration, were practically extinct. Meanwhile, the popular party in England, steeped in corruption, and gorged with the spoils of the state, which the expensive system of government, introduced with the Revolution, had done so much to augment, was effectually gagged, and was enjoying its lucrative abuses in silence. This is the true explanation and real cause of the prodigious corruptions which pervaded every department of the state, and – what was worse – every class in the country during the seventy years which followed the Revolution, and which had wellnigh proved fatal to all patriotic spirit, or public virtue in England. The two powers, that of the government and the people, usually opposing each other, had come to draw in the same direction, and they raised between them a spring-tide of corruption, which wellnigh submerged the state.

There can be no question, that if this degrading system of government – the necessary and never-failing result of successful revolution – had continued for a generation longer, it would have proved altogether fatal to Great Britain. But, fortunately for the country, George III. and his advisers, from the very first moment of his accession to the throne, set his face against the party which had introduced and matured this system of government; and their efforts, though after a severe struggle, were successful. This was the turning-point of English history; upon the success of that attempt, the future character of the government and of the people mainly depended. It, for the first time since the Revolution, restored the government to its proper position – it rested it, in its ultimate effects, on property, and put numbers in opposition. This is the only proper basis of good government – for without property ruling, there can be no stability in administration; and without numbers watching, there is no security against the multiplication of abuses. The corrupt system of Sir R. Walpole, and the preceding administrations, had arisen from the popular party – that is, numbers – having become the ruling power, and of course appropriated to themselves the whole spoils of the state. Instantly their watching became equal to nothing, and every abuse was perpetrated without either exposure or complaint. There were no Wilkeses nor Juniuses, to lash the vices of administration, from 1688 to 1761, when the Whigs were in power; though that was beyond all question the most corrupt period of English history. But they appeared fast enough, and did infinite good, as soon as the Tories got possession of the public treasury. This is the true secret of the unbounded corruption of the government of the Convention and Directory in France – of the rapid return to a corrupt system during the ten years of Whig power which succeeded the downfall of the Tories in 1830, and of the establishment of Louis Philippe's dynasty, now, on the basis of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand offices, which Tocqueville tells us are at the disposal of the ruling power at the Tuileries. It is not that the popular leaders are worse men, or by nature more inclined to evil, than their Conservative opponents, but that, when they are elevated into power by the result of a revolution or social convulsion, the controlling has become the ruling power; its leaders and followers alike profit by corruption and mal-administration; and therefore there is no longer any possible restraint on abuse. It is not that the Conservative leaders are by nature better men, or more inclined to eschew evil and do good than their popular opponents: but that, as the basis of their government is property, which necessarily is vested in comparatively few hands, they are of course opposed and narrowly watched by numbers; and thus they are deterred from doing evil, from the dread of its consequences recoiling upon themselves. And this observation explains the cause of the remark by Montesquieu, which the experience of all ages has proved to be well founded, "that the most degrading despotisms recorded in history have been those which have immediately followed a successful revolution."

The clearest proof of how strongly, and all but indelibly, corruption and abuses had become engrained, as it were, on the practice of the English constitution, is to be found in their long continuance and pernicious effects after the popular party had been thrown back to their proper duty of watching and checking the abuses of government, and despite the prodigious efforts which were made, and the vast talent which was exerted, to expose and decry it. Walpole tells us enough of the corrupt means by which Lord Bute's authority was maintained, and of the discreditable intrigues by which succeeding administrations were raised up and cast down. Wilkes and Junius exposed, in cutting libels, and with caustic severity, their real or supposed continuance in a subsequent part of the reign of George III.; Burke and Fox declaimed in a voice of thunder against the vices of Lord North's administration; and the disasters of that untoward period demonstrate but too clearly, that the radical vice of parliamentary influence had almost banished talent and ability from the public service. Every one knows that commissions in the army and navy were bestowed on children, as the mere price of support to government; and that, when the little hirelings of corruption were sent forth into the public service, they were utterly ignorant, for the most part, of even the most elementary parts of their duty. The same system continued during the early years of the Revolutionary war: and we all know with what disastrous effects it was then attended. But the Whig orators and patriots, with all their acuteness and zeal, forgot to tell us one thing, which, however, it most behoved them to have told – and that is, that it was themselves who had formed and habituated the nation to this degrading system. They have forgot to tell us that they had the framing of the constitution in church and state, after the Revolution of 1688; that their power was, for above a century, entirely paramount; and that, if the system of government had come, during that time, to rest on corrupt influences, it was they, and they alone, who are responsible for the practical moulding of the constitution into such a form.

No man who knows the human heart, or has had any experience, either of public characters in his own, or historic shades in any former age, will suppose that the Conservative party are more inclined in their hearts to pure and virtuous administration than their popular opponents; but, nevertheless, there can be no question that their government, generally speaking, is much more pure, and its effects far more beneficial. Decisive proof of this exists in English history during the nineteenth century. It took nearly forty years of incessant effort on the part of the Whigs to eradicate the harvest of corruption which sprang up since 1761, from the seeds so profusely sown by their predecessors during the seventy years before that period; and unless they had been aided by the disasters of the American, and the perilous chances of the Revolutionary contest, it is probable all their efforts would have been unsuccessful. But when, by the firmness of George III., and the talent of Mr Pitt, the contest for political supremacy was at an end, and government was rested on its true basis – that of property being the ruling, and numbers the controlling power – when the Tory party, freed from the influence of their old Jacobite recollections, had rallied with sincere loyalty round the throne, and the Whigs, having lost the glittering prospect of a return to power and corruption, had been driven to seek for support in the passions of the people, what a marvellous display of public virtue and strength did the empire afford! Search the annals of the world, you will find nothing superior, few things equal, to the patriotism, public spirit, and generous devotion of the latter period of the Revolutionary war. Its unequalled triumphs prove this; the biographies of its great men, which are daily issuing from the press, show from what a noble and elevated spirit these triumphs had sprung. They conquered because they were worthy to conquer. The burning patriotism of Nelson; the prophetic courage of Pitt; the spotless heart of Collingwood; the stern resolves of St Vincent; the steady judgment of Eldon; the moral firmness of Castlereagh; the unconquerable resolution of Wellington, shine forth as the most conspicuous ornaments of this brilliant period. But these men, great as they were, did not stand alone. They were in prominent situations, and have thence acquired immortal fame; but they were followed and supported by hundreds and thousands, animated with the same spirit, and possessing, if called forth, the same abilities. England at that period seemed to have reached that epoch in national life, "brief and speedily to perish," as Tacitus says, when the firmness of aristocracy had given invincible resolution, and the energy of democracy inexhaustible vigour to the state; when we had the tenacity of nobles without their pride, and the vehemence of the people without their licentiousness – "Si monumentum quæris, circumspice."

The Emperor Nicholas, therefore, judged too hastily when he condemned all free countries and constitutional monarchies as necessarily the seats of corruption. It is no wonder he thought so from the experience he had of them, and that which the greater part of such governments, in his time, had afforded. If we had judged of constitutional monarchy and the cause of freedom from the history of England from 1688 to 1793, we should have said the same. But the subsequent history of the British empire has revealed the real cause of these general and wide-spread abuses. It has shown that they arose not necessarily from the triumph of freedom, but accidentally from government, in consequence of that triumph, having for a long period been established on a wrong basis. The contending powers, whose opposition produces equilibrium, had been brought to draw in the same direction, and thence the spring-tide of corruption. A constitutional monarchy is not necessarily based on patronage; it is so only when the popular party are in power. That party, having, as a whole, little or no interest in the property of the state, can be retained in obedience, and hindered from urging on the revolutionary movement, only by being well supplied with offices. It is like a beast of prey, which must be constantly gorged to be kept quiet. But the holders of property need no such degrading motive to keep them steady to the cause of order. They are retained there by their own private interest; by their deep stake in the maintenance of tranquillity; by their desire to transmit their estates unimpaired to their descendants. They are as certain, in the general case, of supporting the cause of order, and its guardians at the helm of a state, as the passengers in a ship are of standing by the pilot and crew who are to save them from the waves. The true, the legitimate, the honourable support of a Conservative government, is to be found in that numerous class of men who have no favours to ask, who would disdain to accept any gratification, who adhere to the cause of order, because it is that of peace, of religion, of themselves, and of their children. It is a sense of the strength of these bonds, a knowledge of the independent and disinterested support which they are certain of receiving, which enables a Conservative administration so often to neglect its supporters in the distribution of the public patronage, and seek for merit and worth in the ranks of its opponents. A democratic government can never do this, because the passions and interests of the great bulk of its supporters are adverse to the preservation of property; and therefore they can be kept to their colours, and hindered from clamouring for those measures which its leaders feel to be destructive, only by the exclusive enjoyment and entire monopoly of all the patronage of the state.

Without undervaluing, then, the effects of the Revolution of 1688; without discrediting the motives of many of the patriots who combined to shake off the oppressive tyranny and Romish bigotry of James II., it may safely be affirmed, that it was George III., Lord Bute, and Mr Pitt, who put the British constitution upon its right, and the only durable and beneficial, basis, and worked out the Revolution itself to its appropriate and beneficent effects. This is the great and important moral of English history during the eighteenth century; this is the conclusion forced on the mind by the perusal of Walpole's Memoirs, and his vehement abuse of Lord Bute and George III. for their dismissal of the Whigs from power. Doubtless, they acted from selfish motives in doing so. The king wanted to regain his prerogative, the minister to secure his power; but still it was, on the part of both, a step in the right direction. But for the resolute stand which they made against the Whig oligarchy – but for their wisdom in throwing themselves on the property of the nation to withstand its debasement, a domineering party would have become omnipotent, the people would have been irrecoverably plunged in the slough of corruption, and the liberties of England lost for ever, according to all former experience, in the firmly established despotism consequent on a successful revolution. George III. said, on the first decisive parliamentary division which gave a majority to the Tories in 1761 – "At length, then, we have a king on the throne in England." Posterity will add – at length the foundations of a free constitution were laid on a durable and practicable basis.

NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS

No. II

Dryden and Pope

Specimens of the British Critics are unavoidably an irregular history of Criticism in this island; and such a history of our Criticism is unavoidably one, too, of our Poetry. The first name in our series is Dryden. See what we have written, and you find half of our paper is on Shakspeare. Pope is our next worthy; and of three or four pillars on which his name as a critic rests, one is his character of the Protagonist. Thus, for this earlier part of a new Age, the Presidents of Criticism are the two Kings of Verse.

When the poet is a critic, how shall we sever in him the two Arts? If his prose is explicit, his verse is implicit criticism; and there was thus a reason for speaking somewhat especially of Dryden's character as a tragedian in drawing his character as a critic. But indeed the man, the critic, and the poet, are one, and must be characterized as a whole; only you may choose which aspect shall be principal. In studying his works you are struck, throughout, with a mind loosely disciplined in its great intellectual powers. In his critical writings, principles hastily proposed from partial consideration, are set up and forgotten. He intends largely, but a thousand causes restrain and lame the execution. Milton, in unsettled times, maintained his inward tranquillity of soul – and "dwelt apart." Dryden, in times oscillating indeed and various, yet quieter and safer, discloses private disturbance. His own bark appears to be borne on continually on a restless, violent, whirling, and tossing stream. It never sleeps in brightness on its own calm and bright shadow. An unhappy biography weaves itself into the history of the inly dwelling Genius.

His treatment of "The Tempest" shows that he wanted intelligence of highest passion and imagination. One powerful mind must have discernment of another; and he speaks best of Shakspeare when most generally. Then we might believe that he understood him in all the greatness of his might; but our belief cannot support itself among the many outrages offered by him to nature, in a blind or wanton desecration of her holiest revealments to her inspired priest. In the sense stated above, his transformation of "The Tempest," is an implicit criticism of "The Tempest." And, assuredly, there is no great rashness of theorizing in him who finds in this barbarous murder, evidence to a lack of apprehension in Dryden, for some part of the beauty which he swept away. It would be unjustifiable towards the man to believe that, for the lowest legitimate end of a playwright – money – or for the lower, because illegitimate end, the popular breath of a day amongst a public of a day – he voluntarily ruined one of the most delicate amongst the beautiful creations with which the divine muse, his own patroness, had enlarged and adorned the bright world of mind – ruined it down to the depraved, the degraded, the debased, the grovelling, the vulgar taste of a corrupt court and town. "The Inchanted Island" is a dolorous document ungainsayable, to the appreciation, in particulars, by that Dryden who could, in generals, laud Shakspeare so well – of that Shakspeare. And if, by Dryden, then by the age which he eminently led, and for which he created, and for which he – destroyed.

"The Inchanted Island," and "The State of Innocence" come under no criticism. They are literary FACINORA. No rational account – no theory of them can be given. There they are – melancholy, but instructive facts. They express the revolution of the national spirit, on the upper degrees of the social scale. That which thirty, twenty, ten years before was impossible, happens. The hewing in pieces of Shakspeare, to throw him into the magical caldron, to reproduce him, not in youth but in dotage, shows a death, but not yet the consequent life. Stupendous and sweet Nature whom we possessed, has vanished – fled heavenward – resolved into a dew – gone, into the country. At least, she is no longer in town! It may safely be averred, that no straining of the human intellect can compute the interval overleaped betwixt those originals, and these transcriptions. It is no translation, paraphrase, metaphrase. It is as if we should catch a confused and misapprehending glimpse of something that is going on in Jupiter. It is a transference from one order of beings to another; who have some intellectual processes in common, but are allied by no sympathy. The sublime is gone! The beautiful is gone! The rational is gone! The loving is gone! The divine is not here! Nor the angelical! Nor the human! Alas! not even the diabolical! All is corrupted! banished! obliterated!

We have seen Dryden complaining of Shakspeare's language and style – of the language as antiquated from the understanding of an audience in his own day – of the whole style as being "so pestered with the figurative expressions, that it is as affected as it is obscure." And we were aware of the modest self-attribution, "I have refined the language," in Drydenising Troilus and Cressida, "which before was obsolete." And Samuel Johnson corroborates and enlarges the self-praise. "Dryden was the first who refined the language of poetry."

At this day, such expressions fill the younger votary – creative or critical – of our vernacular muse with astonishment and perplexity, and set an older one upon thinking. Such assertions, it must be said, are "unintelligible" now, because a nobler unfolding of time, a happy return of our educated mind to the old and to the natural, has "antiquated" the literary sentiment, which Dryden and Johnson shared, and which they so confidently proposed to fitly-prepared readers.

Shakspeare obsolete! There is not a writer of to-day – whose WORDS are nearer to our hearts. Our own are hardly as intimate there, as HIS are—

"You are my true and honourable wife,
As dear to me as are the ruddy drops
That visit my sad heart,"

says the troubled Brutus to Portia, who has expressed a misdoubting of his true and clear affection for her.

Is this "antiquated" English, and thence "unintelligible?"

"Viola.– My father had a daughter loved a man,
As it might be, perhaps, were I a woman,
I should your lordship.

Duke.—And what's her history?

Viola.—A blank, my lord. She never told her love.

****

Duke.– But died thy sister of her love, my boy?

Viola.– I am all the daughters of my father's house,
And all the brothers, too."

"Miranda.– I am a fool
To weep at what I am glad of.

Ferdinand.– Where should this music be?
I' th' air? – or th' earth?
It sounds no more; and sure it waits upon
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank,
Weeping again the king my father's wreck,
This music crept by me upon the waters,
Allaying both their fury and my passion
With its sweet air. Thence have I follow'd it,
Or it hath drawn me, rather. But 'tis gone —
No! it begins again.

****

The ditty does remember my drown'd father.
This is no mortal business, nor no sound
That the earth owes. – I hear it now above me."