1818.]

State of Parties, and the Edinburgh Review.

for his angry and vehement opposition to this war in its commencement-an opposition continued by himself and his successors down to the moment of its splendid termination-that Mr Fox himself lost the public confidence, and has entailed upon his adherents, as a party, this irredeemable forfeiture.

And where is the man capable of appreciating the events of the last thirty years, who can wonder at or lament this result? Was it wrong to resist that revolution which has filled the world with misery, and as to which, now that its fury is expended, we know not whether most to deride the extravagance of its pretensions, or detest the enormity of its crimes? Was it unwise to shut the barriers of this yet uncorrupted kingdom against the flood of vice and of folly which was fast rolling to its shores ?to denounce a system which, in the very act of declaring an insane equality, merged into the sternest and most odious tyranny?— which delivered over millions, in the frenzy of moral intoxication, to the craft and cruelty of its own unbelieving apostles? was it wrong to oppose that monstrous system, which fixed the stamp of hypocrisy on social intercourse, and spread dishonour among nations?-which, in the accents of toleration, issued its code of proscription and murder?-which insulted thrones, contaminated the people, despised man, and disowned God? What privation,-what danger, which even of the ordinary modes of destruction was not preferable to the contact of this foul pestilence, which never destroyed before it had first de graded its victims?

Nor can the English admirers of this Revolution plead that they were ever misled by its casual deviation into the paths of honour and morality. Its principle was one and unchanged-working in different forms and by different instruments-but unchanged in its essence, and uniform in its tendencies -from the impurpled frenzy of Robespierre, to the more considerate and comprehensive desolation of Bonaparte. Sometimes it stooped to deceive,-oftener it rose in wild menace and defiance, now it was a secret poison, stealing through every vein,and again it was a volcano, blazing vengeance and ruin upon the nations. The long line of its heroes and martyrs had all upon them the resemblance of

717

family and the stamp of kindred; and
in their unextorted confessions, as well
as their wildest undertakings, through-
out their whole career, whether of
speculation or of practice, we discover
only the varying passage towards that
boundless ocean of blood in which
their unmitigable spirits were to wash
away the virtue and the piety of man-
kind.

The English Whigs, indeed, some-
times attempted to qualify their ad-
miration of the French Revolution,
by assigning natural limits to its in-
fluence-by describing it as well a-
dapted to the actual condition of
France alone. But could they seri
ously expect to see this Revolution,
if once triumphant, confined within
the French territories? If there had
have expended
been a chance that the fury of the
Revolution would
itself within such limits, that the
factions raging against each other in
that devoted country would have
become forgetful of foreign rela-
tions, and negligent of foreign con-
quest,-that other nations might have
safely witnessed the career of infamy
and crime without danger from the
example, or injury from the shock,-
that the energetic and sagacious rulers
of this frightful intestine strife would
not have provided for the stability of
their system, by lavishing the raised
spirit of an impetuous people in exter-
nal aggression and remote violence ;-
if there had been a reasonable pros-
pect that, terrified by the sanguinary
apparition which they had called forth,
they might have willingly assisted to
quell it, had they not been provoked
to madness by the insult of foreign
aggression, or that, renouncing their
wild ambition, their visionary theories,
and their practical enormities, they
might have returned to a state of or-
der and tranquillity, but for the un-
compromising haughtiness with which
they were excluded from the relations
of policy and the intercourse of na-
tions;-if there had been any ground
for supposing that the French Revo-
lution was to be flattered into qui-
escence, or persuaded into moderation,
or despised into self-destruction, then
might the policy of England have
merited reprobation, while the steady
and unvarying opposition of the Whigs
But nothing could
might have demanded the applause of
their country.
have been more chimerical than such

expectations. What! talk of the selfdestroying power of a system which was nourished by blood and matured by crime-which rose up to its most stupendous height on the swelling wave of carnage which counted every actual sacrifice but as an insignificant unit in its infinite series of renovation, and made humanity the subject of callous and unshrinking experiment; talk of the possible forbearance and moderation, the virtuous abhorrence, the repenting terrors of the children and champions of Revolution, of the Robespierres, the Dantons, the Marats, the Carnots, most of whom expired in blasphemous devotion to their own profligate faith. To speak of alliance as desirable, or neutrality as possible, with these desperate men, and the gang whom they maddened into the ruffian sublimity of revolution, is an outrage on the indignant feelings of mankind.

As the war advanced, the real character of the enemy became more frightfully conspicuous; and although the British nation had now become nearly unanimous, the Whigs, still clinging to their original predilections, although under many professed modifications, opposed, as vigorously as ever, the principle of this mighty contest. Could they yet mistake the genius of that Revolution against which their country was struggling even for existence, and of which every day was deepening the unrivalled horrors? Absolutely towering in malevolent grandeur, above the vicissitudes of fortune, victory but kindled with scorn, while defeat redoubled its fury; and for a long series of dark and hopeless years, amid all the casualities of war and policy, there seemed to be in the world but one cloudy and progressive movement-the march and the triumph of revolution. All around seemed stationary or declining; revolution alone was making constant and rapid strides, not only surviving, but exulting in misfortune, -holding fast the language of enthu siasm in the very agony of disappointment, vomiting its undisciplined hordes in terrible succession upon Europe, and inspiring them with a frenzy which appeared to rise with the carnage made in their impetuous masses,-drawing new and gratuitous horrors round the ordinary ravages of war, even in moments when a merit

ed retribution appeared ready to envelope the sanguinary inventors,-rising in pride and defiance towards the mighty combination which its excesses had provoked, just when the stroke of fate appeared about to descend,and, in spite of this insane trampling upon every principle of ordinary policy, fulfilling its arrogant prophecies of vengeance and of dominion by means which, as they contradicted all the ordinary principles of policy, and appeared to transcend in their operation the laws of nature themselves, filled every bosom with that instinctive horror which is felt in the very imagination of the resistless and preternatural supremacy of the genius of evil.

It were superfluous to follow the course of this awful visitation farther; its more recent transformations, exploits, and horrors, are fresh in the recollection of all. In its every shapedirectorial, consular, imperial-in its republican agitations, as well as in its despotic and overshadowing stillness— the English Whigs found matter of qualified panegyric and of mitigated reproach; and their councils to England were ever-peace, submission, humiliation. Till the deep, and it is to be hoped final, descent of the destroyer into oblivion, their theme was his truly legitimate title-their boast his resistless supremacy. Nor were they roused from their profound speculations on the prospects of the 4th Gallic dynasty, but by the fatal thunders of Waterloo, which swept it for ever from the earth.

England cannot take such a party into her councils at this moment. Although the power of revolution is broken, its spirit is not extinguished; the mighty arrangements which have been accomplished in the spirit of another system, yet require the sustaining agency of the same principles by which they have been established; the disordered aspect of Europe yet invites the vigilance of Britain, and may still demand new interposition of her power. It is to no purpose, that in these circumstances the Whigs still vehemently appeal to the settled indifference of the people-that deluded with the semblance of victory in the turbulent results of one or two rabble elections, they already indulge the hope of dissolving the administration-that, as if their talent as well as their credit were in rapid decline, they have en

1818.3 cumbered the pages of their steady and once potent organ with a statement of their claims, in which presumption and dulness are combined in rare and whimsical proportions. The last Number of the Edinburgh Review contains an article on the "State of Parties," which, as it probably escaped the notice of the ingenious and learned Editor in the hurry of his other employments, deserves attention rather as a tribute to the expiring celebrity of the work, than to the merits of this particular performance. The paper is, from beginning to end, a tissue of elaborate truisms and gratuitous assumptions, sprinkled with numerous and not unimportant misrepresentations. There are two leading propositions which it is the ambition of the author to illustrate that party is in itself a good thing, and that the present Opposition constitute the best of all parties. But of the conclusion to which his tedious and involved argument necessarily leads, he was not perhaps aware, viz. that his Whig friends are alone qualified, by their virtue and talent, to sustain the character of a constitutional Opposition, without which the liberties of England must perish; and of course, that their continuance in their present condition of lofty and sullen independence, is required for the salvation of the country. It will be seen in the sequel how well he establishes this momentous position.

State of Parties, and the Edinburgh Review.

The author feels some difficulty in
explaining his motives for stirring the
question of party distinctions at the
present moment, and has performed
the task of apologising so indifferent-
ly, that he might as well have confess
ed at once the true source of the invi-
dious movement-the ambition of place
and of power. The return of peace,
he says, has changed the relations
has alternately weakened and strength-
ened the distinctions among states
men; the spirit of the people-the
power of public opinion-is beginning
to assert its ascendancy; and the in-
ference is, that a review of the State of
Parties is demanded. But the return
of peace will not obliterate the remem-
brance of the war-of the principles
developed, or the conduct pursued,
during its progress of the steady and
indignant resistance made by one great
party to every measure intended to
avert from the state a catastrophe that
VOL. III.

719

will ever appear more hideous the
more mankind are enlightened, unless
it be the effect of knowledge to cor-
rupt every sentiment of national pride,
and extinguish every spark of patriot-
ism.

The advantage of party connexions,
when founded on generous and lofty
views, has never been disputed. It
was superfluous, therefore, for this au-
thor to array, with all the minuteness
of a mathematical demonstration, the
elementary principles by which they
are defended, and to ransack the po
litical works of Burke for the details
of an argument which, ever since it
was illustrated by the splendour of
his eloquence, has been familiar to
every understanding. The passages
selected by the Reviewer from that
immortal writer, as an ornament to
his own dreary speculation, are like
flowers in a desert, breathing a sweet
fragrance through the surrounding
wilderness. But the argument about
party connexions is not strengthened
by such embellishment, and is neither
expanded nor illustrated by the genius
of the Reviewer. All that is old is
familiar-and all that is new in his
speculation is worthless and unprofit-
able. The abuse of party connexions
is the only real question, and this
abuse the author of the Review has
done his utmost to defend.

He defends an indiscriminate opposition to all the measures, good or bad, which are proposed by another party, whose general principles and policy are condemned; he maintains, that every member of the opposing confederacy is bound to submit his private opinion on each particular question, to the will of the leader, or of the majority of the faction; he demands this corrupt submission upon the same principle upon which every citizen is bound to yield obedience to a law when once enacted, although he may have disapproved of its introduction; and, finally, he adds, that when a measure in itself good is proposed, a man "is liable to no charge of factious conduct, or of inconsistency, if he object to it in the hands of one class of statesmen, and afterwards approve of it in those of another and better description." Here is a bold and startling avowal indeed. What are the ties of political connexion irreconcilable to the purity of

Edinburgh Review, No 59, p. 187. 4 Y

private virtue and the sacred rights of
conscience? Must a man who forms a
party attachment give his morality in-
to the keeping of an unscrupulous and
daring leader, or consign it to the
perilous guardianship of an obedient
and uninquiring majority? Will even
neutrality, after all but a poor and dis-
reputable compromise betwixt profi-
gacy and fear, not satisfy the cravings
of party spirit; but must its votary
speak, decide, vote, and act, in con-
tradiction to the clearest dictates of his
understanding, and sacrifice the pre-
sent good of his country to the future
triumph of his party? It is vain to
compare this profligate conformity to
the laws of a voluntary association,
with that inevitable obedience due to
the laws of society, into which we are
cast by fortune, and from which we
cannot be severed without ruin. Men
of integrity seek party connexions for
the general good alone; but how is
that to be promoted by the means of
particular crime? Is that systematic
hypocrisy which has become so fatally
prevalent among factions, as to have
made the very name of party a bye-
word and a reproach, favourable to pri-
vate honour, to public virtue, to that
lofty independence so proudly arrogat-
ed by the very men in whose name
this profligate avowal has been made,
and of whose public principles it must
be considered as a solemn declaration
put upon their most authentic and en-
during record? The danger of "the
establishment forever" (to use the
words of the Reviewer), of the bad
system which all agree ought to be
changed," will not justify-will not
even palliate for a moment, this mon-
strous compromise, for that system is
not so bad which may not be put down
by other and more legitimate weapons,
-and no system of public policy, how
inexpedient soever, can be compared
in magnitude of mischief to the fatal
corruption of private honour. In vain
will the Reviewer claim the sanction
of Burke for this detestable sophism-
in vain does he discharge his pointless
sarcasm against the unsullied bosoms
of those who shudder at the remorse-
less latitude of his party faith-who
love to hold fast that integrity which
is the living source of all public and
private good-and would scorn to be
seduced into the crooked passages of
an unprincipled ambition, although
they should conduct through their de-

vious windings to the most splendid pinnacle of worldy grandeur.

Who can be surprised, after such an avowal of principle, at the practices which are afterwards inculcated or defended? A party need not be ashamed, says this enlightened champion, of its most selfish and interested adherents.-The Ministers are surrounded and sustained by their hirelings; and would you range all the corruption on their side, and deny to their opponents the benefit of a share in the ample stock of available depravity?" When we see by what means, and by what persons, the worst of Ministers is always sure to be loaded (says the Reviewer), can there be a more deplorable infatuation than theirs, who would see him displaced for the salvation of the state, and yet scruple to obtain assistance in the just warfare waged against him, from every feeling, and motive, and principle, that can induce any one to join in the struggle?"-It is known to all the world, that there are many base and selfish party attachments; and it has long been suspected, that they are not the least numerous in quarters where the reputation of purity and independence is most fiercely vindicated; but it never be fore occurred to any person to defend them on principle-to embody them in the shape of a political theorem-to admit them as a part of his serious and solemn profession of political faith. Why, this is the very unblushing nakedness of political profligacy-the callous unthinking prostitution of party

the open, avowed, vaunted, consecrated, triumph of vice, without one particle left of redeeming shame-the unveiled, unretiring, hideous display of unstinted corruption. While the base retainers of party were kept in the shade-while they were left to burrow under ground in its shameful and midnight work-while their very existence was considered a scandal to the confederacy, and all visible connexion with them was studiously avoided as a disgrace-there was still a semblance of virtue left to contract and overawe, if it could not extirpate the evil-and to secure the more distinguished and disinterested leaders from the infamy, if it could not wholly save them from the guilt of so foul a contamination. But here is an open and

Edinburgh Review, No 59, p. 190

1818.

State of Parties, and the Edinburgh Review.

"

absolute avowal of corruption-a published recruiting placard from the party of the "natural leaders of the people,' to intimate to the world that no high standard of moral principle is recognised by the corps, or demanded of its members, who shall be welcomed and cherished, whatever be their moral stature or constitution-nothing being required, but that they shall possess and exert in full vigour, the pugnacious principle against the existing Administration. Let the Whigs cease in future to talk of purity and independ

ence.

The topics of coalition and of aristocratical influence are delicate ones for the party whose cause the Reviewer advocates; yet has he ventured to discuss them with the aid of his usual gratuitous assumptions and palpable mistakes as to the true nature of the question. The point for consideration is not, whether aristocratical influence, mingling itself with the other powers in mixed government, be mischievous, or include the evils of a pure aristocracy; but whether this influence, if not mixed in due proportions, but absolutely predominant in the constitution of a party, can be restrained, in the natural arrogance of its career, by any of the barriers which the constitution opposes to the actual possessors of power, from giving full scope to its partial and domineering spirit--from insulting the prince and oppressing the people from degenerating in substance, if not in name, into a detestable oligarchy? This question the Reviewer has not well solved. While upon the subject of coalitions, he has said no more but that they may by possibility be honest-a inode of reasoning not well adapted to defend some coalitions which it was probably his aim to justify, but upon which the public voice has long pronounced an unalterable judgment.

pre

The Reviewer having thus "
pared the way (as he says), for the
few observations which he has to offer
upon the present aspect of politics in
this country," that is, having, under
pretence of a general dissertation on
party, attempted to apologise for some
of the memorable errors with which
his own party is chargeable, rushes
"into the midst of things," by the
following panegyric on the short ad-
"But where
ministration of 1806.
is the Ministry that ever did so much

for the country in so short a space of
time? They introduced upon sound
and enlightened principles a new mi-
litary system; they raised the revenue
to meet the extravagant demands oc-
casioned by the unprovident schemes
of their predecessors, until they could
retrace their steps, and relieve the
people, by economy and peace; they
began those inquiries into public ex-
penditure, which have since, in spite
of their successors, produced a mate-
rial saving to the country, and which,
had they continued in power, would
ere now have effectually relieved its
burthens; they laid the foundation for
peace with America, and of tranquil-
lity in Ireland; finally, they abolished
the slave trade, which had grown up
to a horrible maturity under Mr Pitt's
The
eloquent invectives, and which he, in
the plenitude of his authority, had
never ventured even to abridge.'
last item of this swelling enumeration
is the only one deserving notice; and
with most unfeigned gratitude do we
thank that administration for the abo-
lition of the slave trade, which the long
predominance of selfish feeling and
worse than barbarian prejudice alone
compells us to call a glorious boon to
humanity. Such was the palpable and
stupendous character of the enormity.
But as to the military system, by
which they repressed the ardour, and
almost dissolved the splendid volun-
tary array formed for the defence of
the country-as to their financial do-
ings under the inventive imbecility of
their stripling Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer as to their invisible, and
hitherto unrecorded operations in Ire-
land and America—their more charac-
teristic and memorable expeditions-
their negotiations with Russia, by
which they committed a yet unexpi-
ated treason to the interests of Europe,
it is needless to say any thing, as there
surely was more valour than discretion
in the above ostentatious parade of the
Reviewer, and his absolute challenge
of comparison and inquiry.

How pitiful it is to see him exhaust the artillery of his eloquence against the harmless loquacity and stumbling latinity of poor Major CartwrightCould not his gray hairs and expiring ardour have protected him from the rude assault of a fellow-labourer, although upon a lower slope, of the field

Edinburgh Review, Vol. 59, p. 196.