reason of all the blood that has been shed on the state-scaffolds, how rarely can society rise and answer, "This blood was shed for me." The governments alone, in general, render an account of these sufferings; their passions, their faults, and their interests. alone have commanded them; and after all the inflictions which these unfortunate individuals have sustained, society itself has suffered.'

Scantily diffused, and confined to moralists alone, this knowlege has notwithstanding become popular. It seems to be with us a sort of instinct, which reveals to their utmost extent the situation and the falsehood of power. When they say that the illusions of what is called monarchy are dissipated, and its decep tions vanished, they do not know how far this truth extends. It is not merely the illusions and deceptions that are in question; the very things themselves are changed: the sphere of existence and of action is enlarged; and that which was confined to individuals has become general, not only with regard to society and its defence, but respecting government and its in

terests.'

In his sixth chapter, M. Gurzor defines the nature of justice, and distinguishes between natural and legal justice. He shews that in every action two things are to be considered, viz. the morality of the act itself, and the morality of the agent: but that human justice can examine only the morality of the act. Still, individuals will judge of the criminal by the morality of his intention, and the law therefore incurs a double danger; viz. of erring with regard to the act which it denounces, and of proceeding in the application of its rules so as to shock the public sentiment. In punishing political offences, the law is more especially exposed to this danger, for in them the purest intentions are often accompanied by the most immoral acts. The moral merit or depravity of the action has not the same degree of certainty which attaches to private crimes, and depends on an infinite variety of circumstances, to which the providence of the laws cannot extend. The consideration of the intention, also, has more force in this than in any other case; it is more easy to doubt; the motives are less directly personal; the causes of illusion are more pressing, and even the passions may be more pure.

Having shewn that it is not by the principle of utility alone that justice is to be guided, the author maintains that there are three circumstances which are the foundation of punishment; moral criminality, danger to society, and penal efficacy. Now it is the moral criminality, and not the idea of public danger, (which is complex, and produced by reflection,) that causes an antipathy towards the offender; and if the law sacrifices a pure and disinterested character, even from a professed regard to public safety, it alienates the minds of men,

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and bears the semblance of injustice. Again, is the public danger always so great as it is represented to be by men in authority? Here, also, is a great distinction between political and private crimes. Under every government, free or tyrannical, murder and robbery are dangerous and detestable: but, in political offences, the peril to society varies according to the conduct of those who are in power, and the advantages which the public derive from them. The whole of this chapter deserves the highest praise and attention: but we hasten to examine M. GUIZOT's observations on the necessity of the punishment.

Taking care to disclaim any intention of recommending the abolition of those laws which inflict death for political offences, (a question which the author does not undertake to argue, his object being merely to shew the impolicy of a frequent resort to them,) M. Guizor maintains that, whatever might have been the necessity for employing such severity in former times, when the attacks on governments generally proceeded from individuals aiming at the sovereignty, it has now ceased to exist, in consequence of the change which has been wrought in the character of the assailants. Were the revolutions in Spain, in Portugal, in Naples, and in Piedmont, he asks, the fruit of a contest for the throne, the act of an ambitious individual desirous of ascending it?

'Political dangers have changed their nature—the contest is no longer between man and man, but between systems of government. The lot of a minister, or even of a dynasty, is not subordinate to the fortunes of an adversary, but to those of the system adopted or represented by him. Formerly, society was a possession, and the contest lay between its possessors; now it is enfranchised, and from it alone, or from the great parties into which it is divided, can government derive, not its power only, but its pretensions; while from the same quarter alone it has to look for danger. It is not the question now who forms the government, but how it is conducted. Individuals, I repeat, are nothing more than instruments and interpreters of those general interests, which can never, in any event, want either interpreters or instruments.'

At the end of this chapter, the author attempts to point out the true reason of the severity of punishments in political offences.

'I repeat that power itself feels this; its confidence in these means is a prejudice rather than a conviction; and, like all who are prejudiced, it is disquieted and doubtful before it acts. It persists, notwithstanding; and we are thus under the necessity of examining the true reason of its conduct; of exposing all its pretexts and falsehoods; and of assigning the punishment of death to its proper source. This source is not justice, nor necessity; it is

fear;

fear; not that legitimate and wise apprehension which looks danger in the face, and takes the means of avoiding it, but that blind dread which wishes rather to fly from itself than from the danger; and which, without any reasonable intention, or well formed design, adopts at all hazards any step which offers a chance of relief. Prudence desires safety, fear only wishes to escape from the aspect of danger. On the morrow, perhaps, the danger will be redoubled. No matter: for a moment, it has shaken off a situation full of anxiety, and for a moment will persuade itself) that it has been without fear. This untractable passion never changes its nature; what it is in the obscure incidents of private life, such is it in the bosom of splendor; ever more occupied by its own torments than by the perils which cause them ; ever entertaining the most futile and unreasonable schemes, if they promise an immediate asylum or a little respite from anguish. When to the fears of power those of faction are joined,-when this blind feeling, penetrating the mass of a party, becomes a collective passion, and drives forwards the individuals one on another, who thus flatter themselves with the hope of escaping all personal responsibility; - reason is silent, calculation and foresight disappear, and it is in vain to talk of the necessity or the utility of justice. Fear perceives the necessity in itself; one of those fatal necessities, the empire of which redoubles in proportion as it recedes from its ends; and on which men act mechanically, yet with passion, and without ability to exert their judgment. Such is the terrible example which the Convention and the Jacobins have left us.'

We are sorry that we must pass over the remainder of M. GUIZOT's work in a more cursory manner; but, as the observations which it contains relate principally to the state of politics in France, and have not so much reference to the general question, we may be brief with the less regret. We cannot, however, omit to notice the very sensible remarks on the folly of fostering crimes and conspiracies t the agents in them have incurred capital guilt, when it is in the power of the administrators of justice to suppress them ere they arrive at that point. A contrary course is one of the means by which M. Guizor proposes to avoid the necessity of a too frequent resort to the punishment of death. The extent to which this system of encouragement is carried in England is well known; and one argument which has been used in favor of such practices is that they supply useful examples: but the author's answer is very complete, and effectually exposes the fallacy of the common opinion on this subject.

They promise themselves much from the example: but they forget that, if there be an example of punishment, there is also one of crime, often more powerful than the former. Who can doubt that, in a country where robbery has been infrequent, that

very infrequency will have a greater effect than the severest punishment. How can so evident an analogy be misinterpreted? Mürder has been seen to follow murder, and one incendiary to produce another. The perverse dispositions of men reveal themselves at the appeal thus made to them; and, when they are once launched in their career, the rigor of the laws must be long exercised before it can overcome them.'

We observe that the severity of the law has occasionally produced the same effect in France as in England, and that considerable difficulty has been found in procuring convictions when the punishment was capital. This public feeling of aversion to the system must have some regard paid to it; even the boldest governments have not ventured to despise it. "All men," says Clarendon, in speaking of the execution of Colonel Ashton and others, "appeared so nauseated with blood, and so tired with those abominable spectacles, that Cromwell thought it best to pardon the rest who were condemned, or rather to reprieve them." Yet we are told by some writers that the public sentiment is not to be consulted in the administration of the laws !

We have abstained from offering many remarks on M. GUIZOT's opinions, not only because our entire concurrence with them in general seemed to render our interposition unnecessary, but also that we might find space to give a more complete idea of this valuable treatise; which, as yet, can be but little known even to that portion of the English public, whose inquiries have interested them in the important subject to which it relates. As a writer, M. GUIZOT is eloquent, and occasionally florid; an admirer, we conjecture, of Gibbon: of whose works we believe he some time since published an edition at Paris.

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8vo.

ART. II. Histoire de Philippe II. &c.; i. e. The History of Philip II. King of Spain. By ALEXIS DUMESNIL. pp. 411. Paris. 1822. Imported by Treuttel and Co. Few characters have been exhibited in more opposite colors than that of Philip, son of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and husband of Mary Queen of England. Catholics, monks, and inquisitors, have endeavored to soften down his ferocious features, and wash away the blood-stains from his portrait, in gratitude for an uniform protection of them and an inexorable persecution of the Protestants; while the latter, in the exasperation occasioned by every outrage and insult which his intolerant spirit could inflict, have represented him as a monster rather than a man, combining in his character

all

all the vices which despotic power and hardened bigotry can engender, and possessing no solitary redeeming virtue. When in his long dying illness his body was covered with sores, and the care of his attendants could not deliver him from the swarms of loathsome vermin which bred in the imposthumes, it is no wonder that the Protestants fancied they beheld in the agonies of their oppressor the vengeance of Heaven, and the just punishment inflicted by Providence on an enormous sinner.

When the dominions of the House of Austria, says Mr. Hume, devolved on Philip the Second, all Europe was struck with terror, lest the power of a family which had been raised by fortune should now be carried to an immeasurable height by the wisdom and conduct of this monarch. But never were apprehensions found in the event more groundless. Slow without prudence, ambitious without enterprise, false without deceiving any body, and refined without any true judgment; such was the character of Philip, and such the character which, during his life-time and after his death, he impressed on the Spanish councils. Revolted or depopulated provinces, discontented or indolent inhabitants, were the spectacles which those dominions, lying in every climate of the globe, presented to Philip the Third, a weak prince, and to the Duke of Lerma a minister weak and odious. (Hist. vol. vi. p. 6.) With considerable skill M. DUMESNIL opens the present history.

It is fro part of my design,' he says, to justify the crimes of which Philip is accused, or to weaken the horror which his sanguinary disposition must inspire: but, after all, we shall see by the history of this prince that his superstitious and barbarous devotion was that of the age in which he lived, and that he did not surpass in zeal that which the Pontiffs of the period required. Philip was a conscientious devotee and fanatic: those sentiments of piety were not fictitious which he so well sustained; nor was his confidence in heaven, or his resignation, which at no period of his life deserted him. As at this day we can only satisfy insulted honour by a sacrifice of blood and murderous reparation, so did that prince believe that he could not wash away his own sins but in the blood of infidels and heretics. Kings rule by superstition and cruelty only when the people whom they rule are cruel and superstitious. People, form to yourselves new projects! Nations, conspire together the destruction of your kings! change masters, change them every day, till you become sensible that it is your own corruption and not the will of an individual man that makes you slaves! However haughty and imperious are your tyrants, they can impose on you no other chains, than those which you have forged yourselves!'