any one's continuing to cast upon the French Republic the opprobrium of St. Simonism and Fourierism.

We have thus stated what appear to us to be the causes of the last French revolution. We have not space to examine in detail the causes which have been alleged by the English reviews. The Edinburgh Review, in April, lays the whole blame upon the Socialists, but in July, after that party has been overthrown in the elections, it is manifestly very much puzzled how to account for it, but finally has recourse to that convenient refuge, a mob. We are willing to leave this opinion to rest on its own inherent merit. But we should have thought better of the writer if he had not been guilty of the dishonest artifice of trying to identify republicanism with socialism.

6

With the Quarterly Review, the revolution is "a mob," "a comparatively orderly riot," "the accidental audacity of a dozen obscure agitators, the spawn of two printing-offices," "the work of some thirty or forty incendiaries," another eruption of the volcano of 1789-a revolution without the pretext of a cause. "Of the revolution of 1789 there were visible and substantial causes," -already we see the old revolution begins to grow venerable in the eyes of the Quarterly, and if it were a century older, it would be hoary enough, we doubt not, to be an object of prescriptive reverence'" for that of 1830, plausible pretences; for this of 1848 there were neither." Has not Louis Philippe advanced the internal prosperity of France in a remarkable degree? Was it not this "magnificent benefactor," who renovated and repaired Versailles with such a profusion of expense? Had not the people enough to eat and to drink, even more perhaps than the peasantry and operatives of England itself? Were there not two hundred and forty thousand voters out of thirty-four millions of people? Were there more than one hundred and fifty placemen and officials out of four hundred and sixty members of the Assembly? And was not this because there were not "respectable persons" enough to fill these offices after that "the legitimist country gentlemen" had declined sitting in the new chamber? And was not this being a great deal better off than England in the reigns of George I. and George II, when there were two hundred and seventy-one placemen in the parliaments of the former, and two hundred and fifty-seven in those of the latter, out of five hundred and fifty-eight? And was not the amount of corruption under Louis Philippe as small as it conveniently can be under any government? as small even as it is in England, if the secrets of Downing-street were to be revealed? But after all there must be some cause even of a mob. And what does the reader suppose is the grand secret, which is to account for all the disturbances of the reign of Louis Philippe, and for his final expulsion from the throne? He wanted that which can neither

be "won by courage, nor forfeited by weakness," he wanted "the inherent hereditary birthright of legitimacy." In other words, he wanted precisely what William of Orange and all his successors have wanted, and what the late Emperor of Austria I did not want.

All these articles in the Quarterly Review are written with point, and are extremely piquant and interesting. They are somewhat more courtly, but otherwise they are in the style of the better sort of our stump oratory, in a warmly contested presidential campaign. Every little thing is turned to account. Personal scandal is gladly caught at. A great many good hits are made, and there are some very felicitous perversions. For example, there came before the police courts a few cases of robberies committed in the Tuileries, while the people were in possession of it; a good deal is made of this to discredit the revolution. Citizen Carnot, it seems, had given one office to his brother, and another to his cousin; this to be sure is not forgotten, and it is not overlooked that in the lists of appointments there are "four Aragos, three Marrasts,-Blancs, Maries, Flocons, &c." We have heard almost as much said of President Polk. The crowds of hungry applicants for the spoils, are described to the life, and we must confess it came home to us as a satisfactory evidence that there is a veritable republic in France. The private letters of Louis Philippe and his family, it seems, have been published; a good deal of proper indignation is expended upon the transaction. "No member of the provisional government had any more right to appropriate, either for his own party purposes or for the profit of a literary friend, the late Duke of Orleans' private letters, than Boutron, le Parisien, had to the Duchess of Orleans' necklace." The writer then proceeds to make use of these same private letters, and with considerable dexterity, against Thiers and Lamartine. Would he also have taken in pawn the necklace? But it is not our intention to mount the stump in reply.

We can not, however, quit the subject, without considering for a moment the argument, which the reviewer advances in favor of "the inherent, hereditary birthright of legitimacy." He is performing the part of a prophetic seer; and beholding the republic destroyed, and the nation, wearied of revolution, returning to monarchy, he is not unnaturally solicitous to determine who the monarch should be, and as naturally comes to the conclusion that he must be the legitimate heir of the throne of Louis XVI; and for reasons always powerful, but to which the expulsion of Louis Philippe only because he had not "the inherent hereditary birthright of legitimacy," gives "unanswerable force." He anticipates some opposition to this principle, and proceeds to answer what he supposes will be the chief objection. "Why, they ask us, submit to the rule of a woman or a child rather than select

the fittest man?" He states the question in this way, we suppose, in order to embrace all the contingencies of the case, and yet he has left out the most important contingency of all, that the legitimately descended king may be a tyrant, on which supposition it might be somewhat harder to answer the question why submit to the rule of such an one rather than select the fittest man? But taking his own statement of the question, let us consider the replies which he makes.

We should thus submit, he says, "because, in the first place, experience has shown that nations may be great and happy under women and children. When was England more powerful than under Elizabeth and Anne? When was France happier than when Fleury directed the counsels of young Louis XV?" We acknowledge that the queens of England have been superior to her kings both in intellect and judgment; and if a monarchy was sure of always having queens, or if a regency was sure of being always conducted by a Cardinal Fleury, it might diminish the weight of the objection. The writer proceeds: "And this objection has become still weaker in the modern exercise of constitutional monarchy by responsible advisers." So far as regards "children," we ourselves think the objection much weakened by this fact. If there had been an infant on the throne at several periods in the reign of George III, England would have been spared many calamities, and would sooner have settled the question which her recent reforms have decided, and decided for ever, that the king of England is not a veritable man, but a man of straw. Our principal objection would be on account of the children themselves, for if we remember rightly some passages in the history of England, more than one has been made way with by the murderous hands of an usurping uncle.

But the writer is not altogether satisfied with this reason, and he proceeds to what he calls a better one: "it is safer to accept from the hand of God the risk attending a woman or a child, than to incur the spontaneous danger of cutting one another's throats in deciding who is the fittest man." But have there not been a good many throats cut in England from first to last in determining which of two contending rivals it is that has come from the hand of God? We should have supposed that the wars of the Roses could not have been kept long enough out of the memory of the writer to allow him to pen the sentence. On the contrary, in well established republics, how much precisely is this danger of cutting one another's throats. We in this country have made a selection several times without suffering such a calamity, although perhaps we have not always chosen the fittest man. Seven millions of voters have just done the same thing in France with entire safety to their throats, though the person selected may not be much better than the majority of heaven-descended rulers.

Besides, we think it remains to be proved that electing presidents is less under the providence of God than bearing hereditary

monarchs.

We will follow the writer to his last and strongest reason: "The evil to be guarded against is instability-popular delusion -popular inconstancy-and we therefore adopt the providential circumstance of birthright, exactly because it is what the people can neither confer nor take away-and which for that very reason they are disposed to reverence." But the people have frequently done what the writer would imply they can not do. They took away the crown from Charles I. and James II, and if they have not taken away their right to it, they have kept it a good while in abeyance. Would the writer preach a crusade to drive Queen Victoria from the throne and to put in her place the legitimate, hereditary monarch of England, the Duke of Modena, or whoever he may be? The people of France took away the crown from Louis XVI. and Charles X, and we do not believe they can be persuaded to recognize "the natural, and indefeasible right of the heir to the throne of Henry IV. and Louis XIV.” But after all, what constitutes the stability of empire? Human rights acknowledged, equal laws, a free and educated people, the blessings of life diffused throughout society, the consciousness of sharing in common with all others, the protection of a beneficent government. And as to that "prescriptive reverence" for ancient institutions, what, we would ask, is more ancient than the imprescriptible rights of man? The republics of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and some other states of the Union have continued to exist for more than two hundred years, without civil war, firm and stable, in the enjoyment of blessings unparalleled in the history of man, while England herself has undergone two revolutions and hardly escaped others, and the continent of Europe has once and again been distracted with the strife for freedom.

The simplicity of the writer in reviving the doctrine of the "divine right of kings," for the special benefit of France, is inimitable, or can only be surpassed by his own unconscious self-contradiction in holding up England, at the same time, as a model nation; England, in whose line of princes down to the accession of the reigning family, every third monarch ascended the throne in violation of "the inherent, hereditary birthright of legitimacy!" But we must stop. We will not imitate the reviewer in prophesying the coming history of France, well satisfied to leave the development and the establishment of the great principles of freedom to the disposal of a wise providence.

THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. XXVI.

MAY, 1849.

ART. I.-TEMPORAL POWER OF THE POPE.

Geschichte von Italien, von HEINRICH LEO.

THE remarkable events which have occurred at Rome within the last fifteen months, have naturally led multitudes to inquire, whether the temporal power of the Pope be not near its final extinction, and if so, whether his spiritual power can long be sustained. The former of these inquiries it is not our present purpose to attempt to answer; nor is it very safe to decide whether the dawn of a new day for Catholic Europe is close at hand, or whether the watchman must pace his wearisome round for a long time before he shall catch the first streaks of the true morning. If the Pope has lost his temporal authority for ever, it is not because he has fled from Rome, for this has been done by great numbers of his predecessors; nor because the people are attempting to take the government into their own hands, for papal Rome has not been a stranger to outbreaks and revolutions; but because that same spirit is abroad in Italy, which, if unimpeded, must shake his ecclesiastical throne also, wherever its authority is acknowledged. The other inquiry is one which calls for all the lights which history can furnish, and therefore one which can not be answered intelligently without long and cautious induction. We are far from supposing that we have made such an induction, nor could its results be presented in the proper shape within our limits. The task to which we confine ourselves is an humbler one; that, namely, of laying before our readers some of the more important facts connected with the rise and growth of the Pope's temporal power, in the hope of throwing light upon the question what is likely to be the result of divorcing the two kinds of power from one another.