much reduction, and therefore we must contentedly look for the emigration of capital, and, what is worse to the world, though nationally the same, its destruction by foolish speculations, of which commercial crises are the inevitable results.

Hence it is clear that there will be in this country, for many years, a fund from which the higher purposes of Government may be achieved without entrenching on the support of the labouring people or the real opulence of the nation. In reference to the Emigration scheme, it may be said, that the effect of Government interference simply is to determine, that capital, which was going to leave the country, shall go to that particular foreign country, to which the labourer has been removed. It was before fixed that capital should emigrate: the direction of that migration is settled by the operations of Government. On such grounds as these, therefore, Mr. Mill contends that his scheme if adopted is in the highest degree beneficial. It is greatly preferable to any that we have ever seen proposed for remedying the economical wants of the lower classes and its adoption is in our judgment the very best measure open to the selection of an English Government. To us it seems the best attainable means of attaining a necessary condition of all future social improvement.

We have now arrived at the end of our long labour. We have discussed the circumstances now affecting the condition of the labouring classes, and also the schemes proposed for their advantage. Of Mr. Mill's speculations on this subject we have shown ourselves no lukewarm admirers. And on this account we are at liberty to say that his chapter on the future condition of the labouring classes very much disappointed us. The lower orders are there treated as if they were beings of pure intellect. We do not for a moment deny that it is of great consequence to give the working classes intellectual cultivation, and to develop in their minds a relish for intellectual pleasures, yet we also think that the peculiar qualities of Mr. Mill's mind have led him to assign to such considerations a space out of proportion to their importance. The most important matters for the labouring classes, as for all others, are restraining discipline over their passions and an effec

In recent times these

tual culture of their consciences. wants are more pressing than ever. Great towns are depots of temptation, and, unless care be taken, corrupters of all deep moral feeling. The passions also act with more violence than elsewhere in the intervals of a monotonous occupation, and owing to the increasing division of labour the industrial tasks of mankind are every day becoming more and more monotonous. To these considerations Mr. Mill has not alluded, nor has he enlarged on the dangers of that union between democracy and low wages which in our view make his plans for the elevation of the populace of such urgent and practical interest. If Mr. Mill had been a mere political economist, no blame would have attached to him. But he considers, beside the abstract and isolated consequences of the mere desire for wealth, the application also of these consequences, with all necessary corrections, to the real world of human action. He was therefore bound to have noticed the deeper considerations we have named, and to have neglected to notice them is an omission not less unpleasing because decidedly congenial to a purely intellectual and secular thinker.

And now as we are in the act of concluding our remarks on this admirable work, it is full time to mention what is perhaps its most peculiar merit. It has been well remarked that a writer on detached points in a science need only show his reader where he has succeeded: the author of a systematic treatise must also show them where he has failed. The latter must follow the course of his subject, though it lead him to problems which he fails to solve-the former by selecting his favourite points may easily conceal from his readers that he has ever been vanquished at all. The most appropriate praise to this work is, that it evades no difficulty, and of the problems which occur solves rightly a proportion, on its peculiar subject, beyond all precedent large. No doubt a severe judge will decide that this book is far from perfect. He will we think find there some indistinctness of expression and some diffuseness of explanation, an occasional dogmatism where there is ground for doubt, an excessive averseness to subtle speculation, and a defective appreciation of some moral and religious considerations. But after all abatements have been made, the severest judge will unhesitatingly pronounce that though

there have been in England many acute speculators who have by their economical writings gained much credit in their day and generation, three men only have by such means attained permanent rank among the great thinkers of their country, and that these three are Adam Smith, Ricardo, and John Mill.

ART. III-HALLAM'S SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES.

Supplemental Notes to the View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages. By Henry Hallam. 1848. One Volume, pp. 418.

THE publication of Mr. Hallam's "Middle Ages" in the year 1817 forms an æra in our historical literature. Two great faults are evident in the works which previously enjoyed the highest reputation,-one, that their authors wrote with a preconceived idea of the Middle Ages, and selected only such facts as tended to confirm it; the other, that they generalized too hastily, and attributed to this whole period, usages, institutions, and above all ideas, which really belonged only to particular places and times. The history of political institutions especially had been distorted to suit the views of opposing partisans. When the struggle between the privileged orders and the people began in England in the 17th century and in France early in the 18th, the idea of prescription in politics was as firmly fixed in the minds of the advocates of liberty as of their antagonists, and each endeavoured to appropriate this argument to himself. Popular rights were supposed to rest on charters or unwritten traditionary usage; the reciprocal claims of governors and the governed were deduced from an original compact; and each generation was compelled to establish its title to security from oppression by proving that its predecessors had been free. To ascend to first principles in government, and claim social and political liberty as RIGHTS OF MAN, was a flight far beyond that

Hence mediæval times became the battle-field of modern political parties. Each sought, in the spirit of an advocate, not of an historical inquirer, the facts which were favourable to his own client, and as those times really exhibited the operation of popular as well as monarchical and aristocratic influences, it was easy to make out a case for either, according to the prepossession of the writer, without any direct violation of the truth. In France, the monarchical Velly, the aristocratical Boulainvilliers and the democratic Abbé de Mably could find plausible

reasons for maintaining the most opposite views of the early French Monarchy. In Britain, Hume could persuade his readers, and perhaps himself, that in the reign of Elizabeth the government of England was as despotic as that of Turkey, and that till the time of the Stuarts Englishmen had no idea that they lived under a limited monarchy; while Millar found the Bill of Rights in the whole previous history of the constitution.

The French Revolution took away much of their interest from these antiquarian genealogies of prerogative and liberty. A Frenchman of the Republic, to whom Liberty and Equality had been decreed by law, cared little for the share of either possessed by his progenitors under the Carlovingian kings; to a subject of the Empire, Napoleon and his code stood in the place of the Ordonnances of Louis XI., the Etablissemens of St. Louis and the Capitularies of Charlemagne. In England too, the eagerness with which constitutional antiquities had been discussed gave place to a more interesting question, whether the whole fabric of our mixed monarchy was not to be swept away, and a simple democracy established in its place, or even its independent existence merged in the overwhelming flood of military conquest. In all the governments of continental Europe, the same indifference to inquiries into their ancient constitutions was produced; these had been either wholly changed, or had undergone such modifications that the continuity of tradition was broken. The overthrow of the French power in 1815 restored the connection between the past and the present which the Revolution had interrupted; legitimacy, after a long abeyance, was again acknowledged as a principle of the public law of Europe; and as sovereigns returned to history for the foundation of their titles, subjects began to look to the same source as the origin of their liberties. Mr. Hallam's View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages appeared just at this interesting crisis, and soon obtained a place, both in England and on the continent, among works of the highest authority. The marked difference of its tone from that of the books which had been previously written on the same subjects, was not less remarkable than the wide range of knowledge which it displayed. This was owing no doubt in part to the character of