"noble science" is rapidly on the decline. The ostentatious manner in which the appearance of the "patricians" is mentioned, and the unnecessary panegyric on the fairness of the fight (as if fights were generally unfair), are, in themselves, suspicious. As croakers in the navy declare that the "service is going to the devil," so more truthfully may it be averred that the palmy days of the Fancy has departed. With the exception of the author of Habet, there are few advocates of the legality or the moral grandeur of such spectacles. At any rate, we now seldom encounter the old and popular fallacy that prize-fighting produces "national pluck," "manly courage," "high spirit," and "prevents the use of the knife." Unfortunately, our criminal reports show that the knife is sometimes used in this country-and used most frequently by "navvies" and ruffians who spend a Saturday afternoon, or a Sunday morning occasionally, by beating each other to death with their fists. The police cases, moreover, demonstrate that bullying, brutal usage, and cowardly attacks are too common at the "houses of call" frequented by the gallant "gentlemen of the Ring." It is unphilosophical and unfair to attack any class of men, as a class; but one must strangely shut one's eyes in the presence of patent facts, not to see that, despite their "Pugilistic Benevolent Association," and their apparent liberality and jovial conviviality, a more worthless class does not exist in the community than prize-fighters-and prize-fighters ripened into low publicans. Let contests of skill, with the gloves on, take place by all means; let every Englishman be able to use his fist with coolness and effect, if it be absolutely necessary; but professional prize-fighting is utterly unworthy of our present civilization. was always fierce, and brutal, and cruel-but it has now all these defects, and is, moreover, too closely connected with betting, cheating, drunkenness, and everything that is low.

It

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VOL. II.

UNIVERSAL REVIEW.

DECEMBER, 1859.

REPRESENTATIVE INSTITUTIONS IN FRANCE.*

THE state of subjection in which France appears to us at the present day suffices almost to hide what may in former times have been her approaches to freedom, and in the ease with which a revolutionary form of despotism has stopped up what in other nations are the sources of independence and social strength, we see a proof that to be independent does not seem a necessity to Frenchmen. Yet it is only within a few years that such is really the case; it is only since the so-called "Great Revolution" that France has been growing more and more ripe for a despotic form of government, and the faults and excesses of that very Revolutionwhich, whatever their origin or their form, have this one common peculiarity, that they are always arbitrary and illegal-the faults and excesses of that Revolution are but the inevitable consequence of the absolutism of Louis XIV., that showy piece of mischief at which France, from vanity and ignorance, connived.

These two truths-the capacity of subserviency engendered by the Great Revolution, and the revolutionary tendencies flowing manifestly from the despotism of Louis XIV.-these are to be found set forth latterly in most of the works of French writers of eminence, upon political or historical subjects. The whole of the late lamented M. de Tocqueville's argumentation in his work upon L'Ancien Régime et la Révolution is based upon the two correlative facts to which we have just alluded; the fact of Louis XIV. having, by undeniably revolutionary practices, prepared the strangely autocratic and arbitrary Government of the Revolutionists of the close of the last century, and that of the peculiarly dictatorial character of the revolutionary Government having mainly helped to fashion France to her present consummate aptitude for subserviency.

* La Monarchie Française au Dix-Huitième Siècle: Etudes Historiques. Par le Cte. Louis de Carné. 1 vol. 8vo. Paris: Didier. VOL. II. 3 н

But there were periods in French history when this eagerness to renounce the best attributes of a citizen, this longing to escape all dignified responsibility, this rapid on-rushing to bend low before a uniform yoke (the charm whereof appears to be, to the French mind, its uniformity), were not the characteristics of Frenchmen. On the contrary, up to the time of Cardinal de Richelieu, and through all the previous period of the Valois, of the Ligue, of the religious struggle (so ill appreciated generally by both Catholic and Protestant writers), there is to be noted in the populations of France, of all classes, an almost fierce determination to uphold their rights and privileges, to stand up for themselves, and not be bullied by the constituted authorities. Of the abstraction that, since Louis XIV., has pressed so heavily upon France, under the name of "the State," the Frenchmen of the time we allude to knew luckily nothing. There were local liberties in those days which it would have been unwise in any sovereign to touch. There were municipal institutions which even such unscrupulous tyrants as Catherine of Medici (that bugbear of halfinformed historians!) treated with the profoundest respect. The land was all alive from one end to the other with active and separate forces, each of which cared so ably for its own interests, that it kept its neighbour up to his work too, and all united in raising a barrier before any encroachment of the Crown; the huge aggregate, called society, composed of a thousand complex bodies, bristled up with sturdy self-assertion, and set any such small unity as that of the mere "State at defiance.

Where the Nation is, the "State" is of comparatively small importance. The omnipotence of the "State" is the result of the inferiority of the nation. Since Louis XIV. the "State" has been gradually growing omnipotent in France. We have to thank M. de Carné for filling up a void in French history, and one particularly perplexing to the foreign student of that history.

There are plenty of excellent works upon the sixteenth century in France; far more than we should wish our worst enemy to be condemned to read, upon the administration of Cardinal de Richelieu, upon the Fronde, and upon the Great Revolution; but till M. de Tocqueville published his invaluable Essay, three years since, we are not aware of any book that treated of the political condition of France at that curious epoch of transition, when she had ceased to be a powerful society, but was not yet a powerful State; when she had already given up the attempt to govern herself, but was not yet quite broken-in to the inferiority of being governed.

This intermediate period, we repeat it, has, we believe, no historian, and this is properly so called the Ancien Régime. We thank M. de Carné for the clear and definite explanation of the term, which even M. de Tocqueville had left undefined and vague. We know of few better services than any attempt made to cast light into those great storehouses of imperfect knowledge, into

which are thrust all the things that "everybody knows," and about which, for that very reason, the large majority of people never really know anything at all, because they do not venture to inquire. No word that "everybody knows" was ever more prolific in misunderstandings, caused by universal ignorance, than that one identical word, "L'Ancien Régime."

With that word, the "Liberal," the Republican of all shades, the Revolutionist, the Socialist, the members, in short, of all the many opposition parties that distract France, conceive they destroy the claims to national gratitude of all the kings and statesmen who have ruled over the French race from the time of Charlemagne. L'Ancien Régime with them means everything they object to; as, unfortunately, the still blinder, still narrower-minded ultra-monarchical or Legitimist party persists in attaching the word "Ancien Régime" to whatever it regrets. Perhaps at the bottom of all these, as of so many other political mistakes made by our "spirituel" neighbours, it would be well at once to place their incredible ignorance of history. France-and this is not sufficiently known-France is the only nation that is utterly indifferent to historical truth, and whom it is possible to mislead as to the truths of its own history. When such or such an order is carried into effect, it teaches far more touching those who submit to, than those who issue it. That Napoleon should, in his early years of unlimited power, have decreed that historical facts should only be presented to the opening mind of French youth, under the forms which suited his purposes, this is conceivable, and simply shows him to belong to the tyrant species, whereof this faith in the possible alteration of truth is one of the main characteristics. It is all very natural in Napoleon Bonaparte to have done this; but what can be said of the nation with which it was easy to do it? What Napoleon did for his own ends, his followers have all (with one exception) done for theirs. When the Bourbons returned to France in 1815, they, and their ecclesiastical adherents, thought it "prudent" and wise to tamper with history, as the arch-trickster, who had just retired from the stage of dominion, had done. Whilst Napoleon's historical scribes were busy vilifying the men and the measures that, during eight centuries, had, nevertheless, raised France to no slight eminence in the world, the priests and professors of the Restoration (with some exceptions) were in a body striving to write down all the men whom the anti-Royalist movement of the last quarter of a century had brought forward. This, again, was comprehensible enough, the example having been given, and the facility being admitted with which all Governments in France adopt small and miserable measures. But again, we say, what is the prostration of the national nerves, what the wretched condition to which public opinion has been reduced, when such experiments as these can be successful? That they