of the Luxembourg. A fourth volume is promised by the author, which may supply such defects, and render this alphabetical description an amusing whole.

THE

ART. XVII. Des Finances Publiques de la France, &c. i. e. On the Public Finances of France; with a Word concerning the Fate of the Directory. 8vo. pp. 28. Is. De Doffe, London. 1797. "HE author of this rational pamphlet, whom we understand to be the celebrated M. DE CALONNE, now that the papermoney of France has disappeared without shock or convulsion, ventures to proclaim his conviction of the truth of an opinion, which the reader may find stated during the existence of the assignats in our 19th vol. p. 517, and repeated with some elucidations in our 21st vol. p. 538, namely, that the bankruptcy of the French was not likely to undermine their new constitutions at home, nor to paralyze their vigor abroad; and that to gamble for another campaign on the speculation of affecting their credit, so as to defeat their armies, was to reason against experience, and to decide against evidence. The writer justly exclaims; p. 20:

Is it not time to abjure those doctrines of exhaustion, those suppositions of reverses, which have been refuted by a series of conquests as prodigious as they are advantageous. Be it that much misery, great desolation, a troubling of the sources of prosperity, and an excessive restraint of the means of maintenance, afflict France-yet it is certain that much coin has been reimported, and much unhoarded; that the taxes begin to be collected with regularity; and that a portion even of the interest of the unannihilated debt is now discharged in specie. There is much more ready money in circulation now than of late years. The owners of fixed property, the merchants, the annuitants, are indeed ruined: but the industrious cultivators are enriched, agriculture flourishes, the productions of the soil abound, and if the industry directed to the creation of luxuries has suffered, that which is occupied with necessaries for the supply of home-consumption has thriven, so as to improve the condition of the labourer.'

The writer devotes the five concluding pages of his pamphlet to the inquiry whether the Directory are in danger from the present clamorous state of party in France. He decides

(rightly, we apprehend) in the negative. The present administration of the French enjoys the confidence of the more democratic portion of the nation, which is still, even among the voters, a majority. Were it hard pressed, it would employ Röderer and his fellow-thinkers to move for a farther extension of suffrage. The opposition, on the contrary, consist of the more aristocratic portion of the people, and adopt a language well suited to win for them the support of the royalist faotion,

tion, but without the least intention of carrying their schemes farther than the displacement of their adversaries; who find it convenient to raise a cry of royalism from expressions merely conciliatory and comprehensive.

ART. XVIII. Cyrus & Milto, ou la Republique; i.e. Cyrus and Milto, or the Republic. By H. D'USSIERES. 8vo. pp. 320. Geneva, 1796. Imported by De Boffe, London. Price 5s.

T PERRASSON'S Sethos, Marmontel's Belisarius, and other political romances of this kind, continue to enjoy an extensive reputation, and have contributed to diffuse, in an entertaining form, the legislative philosophy of the modern school. It is the second Cyrus, the employer of Xenophon, not the hero of the Cyropædia, whom M. D'USSIERES has chosen for the vehicle of his speculations, and whom he imagines likely to have realized his ideal character of a perfect sovereign. Cyrus is described as collecting at Sardis the forces with which he means to attack Artaxerxes at Babylon. Plato, and other Greek philosophers of the age, are attracted to the seat of preparation, along with the army of Greek adventurers who are to share the dangers and profits of the enterprise. They discuss the existing grievances of Persia, and project its future constitution; and, having determined on an elective aristocracy for the form of its government, the armies march on to their beneficent conquests, full of philanthropic enthusiasm, but are defeated and annihilated. Milto is the mistress of Cyrus, the Aspasia of the story.

We select the xvIIth chapter:

Its

Genius is like a comet, said Hermogenes; neither its periods nor its effects are known. As the collision of a comet, according to the cosmogony of certain Chaldeans, gave being and order to the planetary worlds, so the existence, the arrangement, of human societies, may result from the impulsion of genius. The idea of a republican form of government will first have been brooded into life, in the warm bosom of some single extraordinary intellect. realization may take place in three distinct ways, by foundation, by succession, or by revolution. A society, scarcely escaped from the swaddling-clothes of nature, may from its very commencement govern itself according to the innate principle of liberty. It may, after having deviated during a fantastic infancy far from the path of inde pendence, resume step by step its native rights; and reconquer, piece by piece, its patrimony of freedom-Or the excess of ill-being, to which the indolence of servility often conducts a nation, may at length goad it to throw off the yoke, to uproot the whole old rotten trunk of tyranny, and to plant on its site and in its soil the beloved bough, the fragrant shade of which is invoked by all. Thus -the precious metals are sometimes brought to us in a state of virgin

purity,

purity, by the natural flow of favoured rivers; sometimes they are slowly separated from mixt materials by a long and toilsome process; sometimes, the vulcano bestows them amid convulsive earthquakes, in masses large as they are pure.

The first law of the human race is the appetite for enjoyment: hence the activity for present good, and the indolence as to future half-foreseen advantages or evils. This instinctive laziness, prevalent even in the most civilized communities, the industry of which might be analyzed into compulsion,-this love of repose,-is the true cause of the antiquity of monarchies. To escape the trouble of managing their affairs, rude tribes suffer individuals and families to usurp authority over them.

Although, however, it be somewhat difficult to cite the example of a nation popularly governed from its very origin, nothing forbids the belief that the great lesson of experience will at length prevail over ignorance and inertness, and that new societies will be founded under different auspices. Our future colonies will transplant, under a new sky, more sound information, fewer vices, and those more severe morals, the household-gods of the free. They will not be wandering hordes, clotheless, roof-less, and ferocious; unknown to the soft attributes of domesticity: who have to wait for the Apollo or Orpheus, for the Ceres or Bacchus, for the Hermes or Minerva, who is to frame the first bonds of harmonious exertion between them, to teach the rudiments of culture, and the elements of science and of art. Unperishable are your gifts, benefactors of your species! at whose voice the primeval forests were changed into hamlets: who metamorphosed the bow and the spear into the sickle, the companion of joy, and into the all-feeding plough. Happy the lawgiver who finds nature in the cradle! he meets with pliant limbs to fashion, the proportion and the vigor of which no artificial bandages have infringed. Simple materials will perhaps arrange themselves, at the voice of his eloquence, in friendly cohesion around the asylum of equality. So to the lyre of the son of Latona arose the infant Tyre! so to the song of Amphion, the walled precincts of Thebes!

Slow and difficult as must be the progress of liberty, when she has to force her way through the entanglement of thorns,-where even the flowers hide serpents, with a new people it is speedy and easy. There a deep swamp forbids cultivation; here, a loamy heath invites the golden harvest. In such circumstances, the statesman has nothing to destroy in order to build up his republic: one half of his toil is saved. He is not opposed by the legions of prejudice: opinion is not the lot of ignorance, but of error: he has only to teach truth, and it is received at once and thankfully adopted. He has to deal with nature, not corruption. She has indeed her inherent pas sions, her defects, and even her vices, but their tinge extends not below the surface: the substance is pure and sound.

If it be considered that a fresh settlement knows neither the refinements of voluptuousness nor the fascinations of luxury, but is se parated from both by a long interval, and consequently that ambition and avarice, the main scourges of republics, must exist there, but in a lull'd and feeble state, being deprived of their appropriate nourish

5

nourishment-it will be felt that liberty may germ there, prolong its roots, and come to timber better than elsewhere. Equality, the sister of Nature, concurs to favour her empire. The slow developement of those real wants, which supersede those that are factitious, -the simplicity of all relations,-the absence of the more laborious and disgusting arts, the spare population, the increase of which is even a source of ease and opulence, the rural and innocent life,what can more favour that equipoise among men which is the true secret of their freedom? Where can the constellation of the laws culminate with a fairer prospect of lasting serenity?

< While other constitutions must submit to the modification of a thousand variable causes, that which is impressed on a primitive community may safely be the precise result of rigorous metaphysical principles. The more regular the government, in this sense of the word, the more it will combine prosperity with vigor, and with the ideal beauty of the sage. Praxiteles strikes the block of marble, and a Venus starts forth: but, had a coarser hand already sculptured a Fury, who would be able to chizel her into a Grace?

It will, then, be sufficient that the consequences of fundamental principles be rightly deduced, and applied without contamination to the rising community, that the division of powers and civic equality should therein be secured. Such a state might forego many precautions, without which a riper society would soon perish. Ages night flow by, ere it experienced the want of them. Had it fortune as well as courage, it might spend an eternity in that robust adolescence which a fastidious civilization tends to wear out.

It were desirable to know whether a nation, which has the virtues of ignorance and poverty, can preserve them without brutalization; whether it can substitute the empire of manners for that of laws, and live becomingly without any shackle. Why should any opportunity for the experiment be missed? It may soon be too late, When the morals have declined, what deity can revive them? It becomes a task even to preserve their feeblest influence, Let us be vigilant in detaining them. Luxury is their peculiar foe. A rising people, then, should resist its admission: should prescribe a narrow orbit to its gratifications; should banish every art of effeminacy; should contrive a successive or periodical reduction of overgrown fortunes; should dedicate its efforts exclusively to agriculture; should disdain the superfluities of which the value is but imaginary; should prevent crowded assemblages and cities, those hot-beds of vice; and should place happiness in virtue, and virtue in patriotism. might the colony which I suggest begin its career of excellence.

Thus

Let us not consult the dreams of sophists, nor the fables of poets. The word morals is, I know, in a great degree conventional, It expresses a state of simplicity,-of rudeness, if you will;-subsequent to the effacement of the vices of barbarism; and prior to the durable vices of civilization. Among barbarians, ignorance, idleness, energy, make criminals: among the civilized, poverty, effeminacy, and luxury. It is easier to teach the child to stand still, than to teach the old man to retrograde. It is only, then, in new communities, that we can hope, by a tempered and limited instrue

tion,

tion, to soften down the harshness of savagcism, without superin ducing the seductions of extensive refinement. It is there only that Saturn and Astrea may again extend the golden sceptre, while mediocrity distributes her vermeil fruitage, and hangs around the palms of science those modest garlands, which the jealous laws must forbid a profane hand from striving to out-top.'

On the whole, there is a want of dramatic vivacity in the historical-and of philosophic precision in the argumentativepart of this romance: but it may be read without regretting the time spent in turning over the pages.

ART. XIX. Montesquieu peint d'après ses Ouvrages, &c. i. e. Montesquieu painted from his Works. By BERTRAND BARERE, EXDeputy from the Department of the Hautes-Pyrénées to the Convention. 8vo. 190 Pages. Printed in Switzerland, reprinted in France, and sold in London by De Boffe, &c. 1797Price 45.

THE

HE talents of BARÈRE are not less notorious than his versatility. His eloquent reports of the victories of the French armies were as distinguished for their effect, as for their want of adherence to fact. On a topic neither factious nor temporary, however, he may be heard without suspicion; and on any topic he must be heard with interest.

The reputation of Montesquieu is now migrating to that remote but stationary elevation, where he will be more frequently quoted than read, more often the subject of appeal than of attention. His Persian Letters satirize practices which are disappearing. His Familiar Letters chiefly interest the biographer. His Temple of Gnidus is a dainty only for a voluptuous imagination. His Declension of Rome teaches less than may be more soundly learned from Gibbon. His Spirit of Laws, like Harrington's Oceana, is full of obsolete inquiry and fanciful theory. In it his imagination is too prominent for the statesman to plead him as authority, or for the philosopher to study him with confidence; and he is obscure and oracular as often from indecision as from profundity. Like Fenelon, he has merited a place in the Pantheon, and is ripe for the repose of the Gods.

This pamphlet is intended for an inaugural dissertation, for a patent of apotheosis, which is to excite and to justify the erection of a monumental altar to Montesquieu, as to the most learned of their theoretical lawgivers, in the Temple of the Heroes of France. The ecstasy of eulogy and the zealotry of panegyric are, on such an occasion, to be expected and to be approved: yet BARÈRE is not wanting in corrective animadversions and modifying criticisms, which tend to shake the au

thority