1831, and was first compelled to mask itself under opposition to a ministry, when the laws of September had made it impossible to attack, through the press, either the king or the monarchy, without the certainty of being ruined, and reduced to silence. But public

feeling, once sufficiently roused, will force a way through all obstacles; and, in spite of the gagging laws, much of the opposition to the government had latterly become almost avowedly a war against the king. There was little personal disrespect shown," says the pamphlet, "towards the illustrious prince." The main political feature of the six months preceding February was the reform banquets; and the most marked circumstance attending these was the repeated premeditated omission, in most of them, to drink the king's health. Lord Brougham reproaches the reformers with not trusting to "repeated discussion and the exertion of the popular influence" for effecting a reform of the Constitution by a vote of parliament. They had little encouragement to rely on such means. ruption which was ruining the government in the general opinion was strengthening it with the narrow and jobbing class who returned a majority of the Chamber. A general election had occurred the summer previous ; and the ministerial majority had gained, not lost, in numbers by it. Lord Brougham boasts, through many pages, of the feat performed by Lord Grey's ministry in effecting a great change in the Constitution (the first such change in history which was so accomplished) without an insurrection. But was it without the fear of an insurrection? If there had been no chance of a rising, would the House of Lords have waived their

The

very cor

opposition, or the Duke of Wellington have thrown. up the game in despair? If, in England, the mere demonstration of popular force sufficed to effect what elsewhere required its actual exertion, it was because the majority of even the unreformed House of Commons was elected by constituencies sufficiently large for a really powerful and unanimous popular determination to reach it, and because the political usages and longstanding liberties of England allowed of popular meetings and political unions without limit or stint. To the French reformers these means of peaceful demonstration were denied. The nearest approach to them allowed by French law was the reform dinners; and these, as soon as they began to produce an effect, the government forbade; reviving for that purpose a decree passed in the stormiest period of the first Revolution. It was when this last resource was denied that popular indignation burst forth, and the monarchy was destroyed.

There never was a greater blunder than to speak of the French Republic as an "improvised government,” -"struck out at a heat,"-"the result of a sudden thought,"—"span-new, untried, and even unthought of." The Revolution, indeed, was unpremeditated, spontaneous: the republican leaders had no more to do with effecting it than the socialist leaders had with the insurrection of June last. But the republicans, immediately after the crisis, became the directors of the movement, because they alone, of the various sections of the French people, had not to improvise a political creed, but already possessed one. It would require a degree of ignorance of French political discussion from

1830 to 1848, which one would not willingly impute even to the author of the "Letter to the Marquess of Lansdowne," not to know, that, during those years, republicanism, instead of being "unthought of," had both been thought of and talked of, in every variety of tone, by friends and enemies, in all corners of France; that several formidable insurrections had broken out in its name; that many well-known chiefs had been, and some still were, in the prisons of Ham, Doullens, and Mont St. Michel, for acts done in its behalf; and that, except the remaining adherents of the elder branch, a republic entered into the calculations of all who speculated either on the dethronement of Louis Philippe, or on the minority of his successor. If William III. had been dethroned for following the example of James II., would the people of this country have put a child on the throne, or sent for some other Prince of Orange from beyond sea? Would they not, almost certainly, have fallen back on the Commonwealth? What the English of the seventeenth century would assuredly have done, the French might do in the nineteenth without exciting surprise. And it was the more to be expected that they would do so, since constitutional royalty is in itself a thing as uncongenial to the character and habits of the French, or any other people of the European continent, as it is suited to the tone of thought and feeling characteristic of England.

From causes which might be traced in the history and development of English society and government, the general habit and practice of the English mind is compromise. No idea is carried out to more than a small portion of its legitimate consequences. Neither

by the generality of our speculative thinkers, nor in the practice of the nation, are the principles which are professed ever thoroughly acted upon: something always stops the application half way. This national habit has consequences of very various character, of which the following is one. It is natural to minds governed by habit (which is the character of the English more than of any other civilized people), that their tastes and inclinations become accommodated to their habitual practice; and, as in England no principle is ever fully carried out, discordance between principles and practice has come to be regarded, not only as the natural but as the desirable state. This is not an epigram or a paradox, but a sober description of the tone of sentiment commonly found in Englishmen. They never feel themselves safe unless they are living under the shadow of some conventional fiction, some agreement to say one thing, and mean another. Now, constitutional royalty is precisely an arrangement of this description. The very essence of it is, that the so-called sovereign does not govern, ought not to govern, is not intended to govern, but yet must be held up to the nation, be addressed by the nation, and even address the nation, as if he or she did govern. This, which was originally a compromise between the friends of popular liberty and those of absolute monarchy, has established itself as a sincere feeling in the mind of the nation, who would be offended, and think their liberties endangered, if a king or a queen meddled any further in the government than to give a formal sanction to all acts of Parliament, and to appoint as ministry, or rather as minister, the person whom the majority in Parliament pointed out;

and yet would be unaffectedly shocked, if every considerable act of government did not profess and pretend to be the act and mandate of the person on the throne. The English are fond of boasting that they do not regard the theory, but only the practice, of institutions ; but their boast stops short of the truth: they actually prefer that their theory should be at variance with their practice. If any one proposed to them to convert their practice into a theory, he would be scouted. It appears to them unnatural and unsafe either to do the thing which they profess, or to profess the thing which they do. A theory which purports to be the very thing intended to be acted upon fills them with alarm: it seems to carry with it a boundless extent of unforeseeable consequences. This disagreeable feeling they are only free from, when the principles laid down are obviously matters of convention, which, it is agreed on all parts, are not to be pressed home.

It is otherwise in France; so much so, that few Frenchmen can understand this singular characteristic of the English mind, which, seen imperfectly and by glimpses, is the origin of those accusations of profound hypocrisy, mistakenly brought by many foreigners against the English nation. Englishmen, on their part, can in general as little understand the comparative simplicity and directness of Continental notions. The French impatience of discrepancy between theory and practice seems to them fancifulness, and want of good sense. It was a Frenchman, not an Englishman, who erected the English practice of constitutional monarchy into a theory; but his maxim, Le roi règne, et ne gouverne pas, took no root on the other side of the