shouts of derision was poor Sir Harcourt Lees received when he ventured to fortell less than the tithe of what is passing before our eyes! A society is organised for the express purpose of disturbing the tranquillity of England, and of exacerbating the chronic ills of Ireland. All this, though more rapid and more violent in its progress, is in substance much what we expected. These agitators are not toiling for Rome: it is their own momentary advantage-the gratification of their own passions-they have in view. They are using the Pope merely as an instrument, and are betraying the cause of the Vatican-and in this mismanagement of the enemy is the only gleam we can discover on our own horizon. Less than these outrages would hardly open the eyes of the candid good-natured public, who, in the year of Grace 1851, think it necessary to make a formal application to the Pope for leave to build a Protestant church in his capitalin order that they may be convinced, by his refusal, of his intolerance. The course to be adopted by this country is plain. Before any other steps are taken, or even discussed, the authority of the law must be re-established. In the mean time we most earnestly caution the pious and honourable among the Roman Catholics how they lend their names to proceedings which they cannot approve, and which must tend ultimately to the injury of their Church; and, above all, how they make themselves participators in the heavy guilt incurred for years by the priesthood in Ireland.

ART. IX.-1. Du Gouvernement de la France: précédé d'une Lettre à M. Guizot sur la Démocratie. Par E. Dehais. Paris, 1851.

2. Réponse de M. Guizot à M. Emile Dehais. Paris, 1851. 3. Parallèle Historique des Révolutions d'Angleterre et de France sous Jacques II. et Charles X. Par le Comte Maxime de Choiseul-Daillecourt, Membre de l'Institut. Paris, 1851.

4. Histoire de la Restauration. Par A. Lamartine. 2 tomes. Paris, 1851.

5. Revision de la Constitution-République et Monarchie. Par le Comte Ferd. de Bertier, Ancien Député, Ministre d'Etat, &c. Paris, 1851.

6. De la Candidature du Prince de Joinville à la Présidence de la République. Par M. Pr. Delarbre, Ancien Représentant à l'Assemblée Constituante. Paris, Août, 1851.

7. L'Ere des Césars. Par M. A. Romieu. Paris, 1850.

8. Une Solution Militaire. Par un Soldat.

Paris, 1851.

9. Idée Générale de la Révolution au XIXme Siècle; Choix

d'Etudes

d'Etudes sur la Pratique Révolutionnaire et Industrielle. Par P. J. Proudhon. Paris, 1851.

10. La Propriété sous la Monarchie, à propos de la Revision. Par V. Guichard, Ancien Constituant. Paris, 1851.

11. La Souveraineté du Peuple; Essai sur l'Esprit de la Révolution. Par Paul de Flotte, Représentant du Peuple. Paris, 1851. 12. Socialisme Conservateur; Essai de Fraternité Chrétienne et pratique. Par Deux Soldats [G. de Leyssac et E. H. de Lupierre]. Paris, 1851. 13. Des Principes de la Stabilité Sociale. Par A. Marini, Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées. Paris, 1851.

14. Les Clubs et les Clubbistes; Histoire Complète Critique et Anecdotique des Clubs et des Comités Electoraux à Paris depuis la Révolution de 1848, &c. Par Alphonse Lucas. Paris, 1851, 15. La République aux Enfers, par un Ami du Diable. 16. Politics for the People. London, 1848.

17. The Message of the Church to Labouring Men; a Sermon preached at St. John's Church, Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, on the evening of Sunday the 22nd of June, 1851. By Charles Kingsley, jun., Rector of Eversley. Price 6d. 1851.

18. Alton Locke, Tailor and Poet, an Autobiography. 2 vols. 1851.

19. Yeast a Problem. Reprinted with corrections and additions, from Fraser's Magazine. 1851.

20. Reasons for Co-operation; a Lecture delivered at the Office for Promoting Working Men's Associations. To which is added God and Mammon, a Sermon to Young Men; preached in St. John's District Church, St. Pancras. By F. D. Maurice, M.A., Chaplain of Lincoln's Inn. 1851.

21. Report of the Commissioner [H. S. Tremenheere] appointed under the provisions of the Act 5th & 6th Victoria, c. 99, to inquire into the operation of that Act and the State of the Population in the Mining Districts, 1850. Presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. London, 1851.

THE

HE works here enumerated, though so unusually numerous, and of such a very heterogeneous appearance, are substantially all on one theme, and but a very small proportion of those with which that theme has overflowed our table. We have selected them as specimens of the various and antagonist modes of treating the one great subject that now occupies and agitates throughout Europe but especially in France and England-the pens of all who write-the passions of all who feel, and the earnest and anxious thoughts of all who concern themselves about either the political or the social systems under which we live

or

or are to live. To advocate or to deprecate-to forward or to retard-to applaud for imitation or to expose in terrorem the progress of Revolution-such, wherever and to whatever extent a political press exists, is now its almost exclusive occupation.

And no wonder. For the European world finds itself in circumstances, for which neither history nor the experience of the last sixty years, so fruitful in revolutions, can afford any parallel and hardly any analogy. The first French Revolution, formidable as it soon became, did not at the outset create any serious alarm for the peace of other countries. Mr. Pitt even took that opportunity of diminishing our army and navy, thinking that France would find sufficient employment at home. Mr. Burke almost alone had the sagacity to foresee the future Upas in the seedling planted on the ruins of the Bastille. When by and by the Jacobinical principles began to overflow upon Europe; they were-as fortunately for the rest of Europe as unhappily for France-accompanied by such internal atrocities as served in a powerful degree to counteract their political and moral effect. From that time forward the danger to her neighbours changed its aspect altogether. They had to defend themselves from her arms, ambition, and usurpations, and, in short, from the very reverse of any disorganising or democratic influences. We need not say that France gave little or no cause for uneasiness during the fifteen years of the Restoration, at once the happiest and the freest that she ever enjoyed-halcyon days, under the indulgence and tranquillity of which were hatched the factions that, by the combined rashness and weakness of the Polignac ministry, were enabled to get up the July Revolution. Even that Revolution, however, had little direct effect on the state of Europe. The principles that prepared it and the mode in which it was executed were, no doubt, sufficiently alarming to all regular Governments, and were seriously felt in England; but the accession of Louis Philippe and his adroit and vigorous kingcraft, soon counteracted those apprehensions, and seemed to strengthen the monarchical principle. It is true that sober-minded men saw-and we ourselves, as our readers may recollect, ventured to predict-that the deceptive principle and false basis of that apparently strong and popular monarchy would eventually overthrow it: but by the personal character of the King, and by a succession of conservative ministers and of bold measures, more decided than the Restoration had ever tried, it lasted eighteen years-not indeed of halcyon repose, for it was a series of émeutes, attempts at assassination, and general political malaise, derived from its origin-but of great material prosperity and of domestic and external peace.

But if the July Revolution was the work of a faction, helped onwards by the folly of the Polignac ministry-the February Revo

lution was a mere surprise, an accident, a collision-without design, without excuse, without motive, almost without object. And hencefrom this very absence of any reasonable cause-the greater and deeper have become the difficulties and the dangers with which it has overwhelmed France and now menaces the world. 'One never goes so far,' said Robespierre, as when one knows not where he is going.' So it is of the February revolution-which was set agoing no one knew how, nor why, nor whither! MM. Thiers and Odillon-Barrot, its unconscious though not innocent authors, had little idea that the factious pretences, by which they hoped to change a ministry and get into their places, were in the twinkling of an eye to become a social and democratic revolution, of which their own ambition was to be the very first victim; but they ought to have known, and we believe did know, enough to deter them, had they been men of either candour or foresight, from making such perilous experiments on the popular temper. They must have known, for everybody knew, that ever since the July Revolution there had been growing up in France (it had even some offsets in England) a new and more popular and dangerous element of political and social disorder, than had yet been brought into direct and avowed operation. All the causes or pretences, indeed, of former revolutions had been exhausted-there was no feudality to abolish as in 1789-no terror to overthrow as in 1794-no disasters and disgraces to repair as in 1800-no military despot to expel as in 1814-no violation of the charter to resist as in 1830. France had tried and used up all known forms of governmentthe old régime and a despotism-three constitutional monarchies— and four republics, the Girondine, the Montagnarde, the Directorial, and the Consular. The people were wearied, blasé, with such chances and changes; they felt them to be only outward forms of government, which concerned slightly and indirectly the masses, who under each of them had pretty nearly the same share of the hardships of life-conscription-taxation-hard work, or, harder still, want of work-poverty-and too frequently misère.

There never has been, and never we suppose will be, wanting in human society that class of malcontent agitators who were so influential in our own great rebellion, and who are quaintly described as those who would not have things SO!' This class, whom nothing can please, though very much thinned in France by the lassitude consequent on so many revolutions, was still very numerous, especially amongst the students of both the metropolitan and provincial colleges - an over-educated but ill-taught youth, too numerous to make respectable livelihoods in the already overstocked professions, and who found a help to their narrow means and vent for their exuberant activity, morbid ambition, and mortified vanity, in journalizing, pamphleteering, organis

ing secret and treasonable societies, and joining, whenever any opportunity presented itself, in every sedition and émeute against the constituted authorities of the day. These were the heads and hearts of the revolutionary party, and, to do them justice, ready enough to become the hands-but the main body of any effective movement must necessarily be composed of the working classes, who in every dense population in France, and especially in Paris, can afford an army ready, like that of Cadmus, to start out of the ground sufficiently armed and drilled for a revolutionary scuffle.

Even this army, however, must be paid; and after the grand deception, as they thought it, of the July Revolution, the leaders of the secret associations found that great bodies of the workmen, and especially the more thinking part of them, required some stronger excitement than the old incendiary topics which had burned themselves out, or mere political theories from which they had found by experience that they could derive no advantage; but there was a theme-a stirring theme-to which the hearts of the masses were sure to vibrate even to convulsion, and which--though it had been broached both in France and England* by one or two crazy theorists, and even attempted by one obscure sect, or rather club, in Paris on a narrow scalehad never been boldly promulgated as an incentive to insurrectionary action and as a principle for regenerating society. This was Communism-not the theoretic and illusory equality of the old republic, but a practical and personal community of all things, even to the extent implied in the axioms that 'Property is robbery,' and 'Family ties an unnatural monopoly.' Monstrous as such doctrines may seem, they became the basis of the new movement, and were greedily swallowed by the million, who really had but little, and fancied they had nothing, to lose and everything to gain by such a change of condition. There were still, however, many, even of the working class, who had a lingering prejudice in favour of their own peculium, small as it might be, and who had some old-fashioned domestic doubts about a community of wives and children; and so, though Communism was and is the real object and end, it was adroitly diluted into the less alarming form and name of Socialism-which had the advantage of seeming to recognise something of private right and voluntary compact, and of keeping in the background the immorality and violence suggested by the term community; but, however mystified in words, the principle was the same, and must, wherever and whenever practically attempted, arrive at the selfsame results.

*See Quarterly Review, on Socialism, Dec. 1839.

M. de