Rome were ranged under the banner of Pompey, for in the ranks of his adversary we find the Fabii, the Valerii, the Æmilii, the Licinii, the Antonii, and the Syllan branch of the Cornelii, names than which no nobler can be found in the page of Roman history. Not a few of these illustrious families had, no doubt, pleased themselves with the fond conceit that it was in the nature of things absurd to imagine that the real strength and dignity of the senatorial order were invaded by a Julius, and left to the defence of a Pompeius; names not less widely distinct in point of ancestral dignity to a Roman ear, than Russell and Peel would be to curs. The result, however, proved their error; and after a desperate struggle, not relaxed in energy by the death of Pompey, the aristocracy were compelled to submit, and saw their order degraded by the introduction of barbarians from the provinces, and base partisans from the city. So immense was the influx, and such the ignorance of the strangers, that ridicule was mingled with indignation, and the following notice was distributed in the cityBonum factum, Ne quis novo senatori curiam ostendat-importing that no good citizen should shew the new members the way to the House of Lords. It is not surprising that a strong reaction should have been produced by measures so violent; and that many of the most zealous partisans of Cæsar, on recovering from their delusion, should have become his most inveterate enemies, and joined the remnant of the aristocratic party, in that rash enterprise to which they were led by him who was entitled ultimus Romanorum. The feeling of the populace meanwhile had passed through the usual transition. In their brawlings for liberty they had been led by Cæsar; supported by them, Cæsar had attained the supreme authority, and under his administration they found some respite from those positive evils which had oppressed them under the comparatively unstable government of the preceding demagogues. Their stupid cry for liberty, therefore, was now converted into cheers for the tried benefit of their favourite's domination. Cæsar became their watch-word, and those who had in good faith fought the battle of popular freedom, found themselves suddenly abandoned by the very parties they had desired to serve. Taking advantage of this state of feeling, the Cæsarian chiefs proscribed and exterminated all the remaining heads of the opposite party, and thus cleared the ground for the erection of a social edifice. The natural contest among themselves was the next act of the drama and the western world became the inheritance of a youth, whose highest and indeed only claim rested on the name of Cæsar. Scanty, however, were the advantages, short-lived the honours, which the Julian race derived from these gigantic efforts, this boundless accumulation of misery and crime. Caligula was the only only prince of that lineage who, after Augustus, enjoyed the fruits of Cæsar's blood-stained ambition. The second emperor was a Claudian, the fifth a Domitian, both among the highest names of the ancient aristocracy; and fearful was the vengeance they took on the upstart nobility for the injury the order had sustained at their hands. No such design, probably, was meditated in their wanton and frantic cruelties, but the retribution was not the less certain or signal because it was inflicted by an unconscious hand. Such are the facts which history has handed down to us respecting the subversion of ancient governments; and the only lesson which the perverted ingenuity of the advocates of democracy can deduce from them is, that concessions to the popular voice should be made at the first outcry, without resistance or delay. These would argue, that had Pericles granted every thing they desired to the people, no Cleon could ever have appeared; that had Tiberius Gracchus fully succeeded in his designs, there would have been no room for a Marius or a Cinna. We are, however, inclined to take a far different view of the case,-convinced that concessions so premature would, in either instance, have precipitated the dissolution of the bonds of society, and have brought the respective states more rapidly to the condition in which they were at length found by Lysander and Sylla. The idea of satisfying popular clamour by concession while anything remains to be conceded, is founded on a fallacy of the most palpable description. The popular will is not the sentiment of any definite and given body of men; if so, it would be easy to ascertain their desires, and to know with what they would rest contented; it is the emanation of countless and ever-changing minds, mingling in perpetual agitation, and ever stirring up some new cause of turbulence. As well might you attempt to enter into a compact with the wave which breaks upon your shores, that when its spray shall have vanished it shall be followed by no succeeding billows, as attempt by concession to arrest the inroads of the governed upon the powers which exercise coercion or restraint upon their will. It would be, by no means, difficult to prove,-on the contrary, it is as clear as the sun at noonday, that were this principle of concession to the popular voice to be so completely brought into action as that the actual majority of individuals composing any community were to possess the supreme authority, no society could possibly subsist. It can hardly be doubted that the actual majority of every community are at all times hostile to Law; that hence every social system carries in its own body the seed of a natural decay-and that unless this tendency to political dissolution effected at some point of the process its own cure, all society must long since have ceased to exist, back to the state when exist, and we must again have gone 'wild in woods the noble savage ran.' evil arising from the necessary conditions of our existence, brings its remedy with it. Long before the final consummation of anarchy and licence, a reaction takes place; the multitudes of the timid and the feeble see themselves, with horror, left to the tender mercies of the ferocious and the strong, and joyfully surrender to some bold spirit their unnatural and odious freedom, as the price of protection. Such is the cycle which all free human societies are perhaps destined to run; but we are not mere puppets, whirled round by a machinery over which we can exercise no control; it belongs to every generation to accelerate or retard its own progress, and to render inevitable change, gentle and inoffensive, or sanguinary and disastrous. We are all destined finally to undergo the mortal shock which will remove us from earthly interests and passions, yet we know that it depends in no small degree upon ourselves whether that change be premature or otherwise, and that it is mainly in our own power to render the decline of life tranquil and even cheerful. One means alone can secure to any society the largest amount and longest duration of political happiness of which its institutions are capable, and that is the strenuous and unremitting efforts of all the governing party, aided by the wise and good of every class, to maintain the sanctity of law, and the inviolability of right. We have seen that the fatal blow to the liberties of both Athens and Rome was dealt through the violated rights of the privileged orders. The lesson is neither local nor temporary; the facts are only exemplifications of the great principle which governs human affairs, that in every state there must exist a conservative and innovating party; a party in possession of power, and a party bent upon obtaining it; that the latter consists not of one body, but of an infinite and self-generating series; and that when the first detachment has gained the desired position, it in turn finds assailants in its former followers. If then the party which should naturally be conservative, yields on principle at every summons, an endless series of precipitate changes, with all their attendant horrors, must be the inevitable result; if they relax their efforts for an instant, they must be swept away by the resistless torrent of innovation. Sic omnia fatis In pejus ruere, ac retro sublapsa referri; Atque illum in præceps prono rapit alveus amni. Political sciolists may oppose one more objection to the appeal VOL. XLV. NO. XC. 2 I on on which we have ventured. They may contend that the introduction of the representative system has so modified practical politics that we cannot fairly argue from the changes which ancient governments underwent, to the probable results of alteration in our own. The representative system has doubtless conferred the greatest benefits on the cause of rational liberty, by affording the means of extending to whole nations privileges which could otherwise only be enjoyed by individual cities. If, however, the representative body are to be the servile delegates of the popular will, and the mere channel for conveying to the executive the demands of the mob, it constitutes a form of government infinitely wilder and more dangerous than the fiercest of the ancient democracies ever witnessed. It presents all the disadvantages of the most absolute democracy, without offering any of the chances of safety which a public assembly of the people, even under the worst circumstances, afforded. In the most furious assemblies of Athens and of Rome, their best and wisest citizens were always there to be heard; Aristides and Phocion, Cicero and Cato were still able at least to raise their voices, and let the people know the true tendency of the course they were pursuing. But from a representative body, such as we have supposed, all wisdom and virtue might be excluded, and, if the people were bent on unwise or iniquitous measures, assuredly would be excluded, and thus, at the very moment of impending ruin, no warning voice might be heard, no persuasive remonstrance raised. Nor let it be supposed that the influence of such men as we have been naming was insignificant. Their enemies were obliged to have recourse to banishment and assassination to rid themselves of a force which they could not long have resisted-the accumulating force of justice and reason overpowered for a time by the fury of passion. But such a constitution as we have been supposing would rid itself voluntarily of a safeguard which the ancient enemies of their country, in limine, and prospectively, were obliged to remove by violence and blood. We have little connexion, immediate or remote, with the aristocracy of the empire; we earn our bread by the sweat of our brow, and no change short of one which would convulse our country to the centre could affect our interests. Our only motive, therefore, in offering these suggestions, is a deep and unalterable conviction, that an aristocracy like our own, checked as it is by the knowledge and spirit of the times, is the form of government under which the greatest portion of liberty is enjoyed, and person and property most effectually secured. Of tyranny from the English government, neither we nor any other sane human being has the slightest fear. Our demagogues prove, by their their daily conduct, that they at least have unbounded confidence in its lenity and forbearance. Convinced, therefore, that the euthanasia of the British constitution predicted by Hume has not the remotest probability of becoming its ultimate fate, our fears take the contrary direction, and we entirely agree with the American writer, Briscoe, that if the liberties of Britain perish, it must be beneath the dagger of the Democracy. It would have been easy to have illustrated our argument from the annals of our own country and of our French neighbours, but the results of these struggles are not yet fully developed, and national or party feeling might have biassed the impartiality of our judgments: we have therefore preferred an appeal to the mighty dead, whose full career of glory, passion, crime, and ruin is before us; at the approach to whose sepulchres all the sordid influences of interest and petty jealousies of party vanish, and from whose experience we can only glean the sacred lessons of wisdom and of truth. Liberty is the vital principle of every true political system, as oxygen is of atmospheric air; and yet philosophers teach us, that of that very atmosphere four parts out of five consist of an ingredient hostile to life, and which cannot be breathed for a minute without inflicting sudden death. One of the greatest lights and ornaments of our own period, surprised at this proportion of baleful influence, surmised that the grand secret for health and longevity would be to augment the vital and diminish the deadly ingredients. The experiment was tried: a gas containing a far greater proportion of oxygen than the atmospheric air was procured, and great was the delight with which Sir Humphry Davy inhaled the resuscitating draught: his chest expanded, his blood flowed more freely, visions of glory glanced before his eyes; but the action soon became involuntary; grins, not spontaneous, distorted his countenance; his limbs severally assumed independence of action; total self-forgetfulness ensued; he was conscious only of an insatiable craving after the pernicious vapour which had intoxicated his senses; and had the experiment been long continued, inevitable frenzy must have been the result. ART. VI.-1. Lives of the British Architects. By Allan Cunningham. 1 vol. (Published in the Family Library.) London. 1831. 2. Designs for Parsonages and Farm Houses, &c. By E. F. Hunt. 1828. 3. Exemplars of Tudor Architecture. By E. F. Hunt. 1830. EV VERY country has an architecture more or less peculiarly its own; formed, like the character and language of its in212 habitants, |